The Trouble with Early Arrival

The highest angels, the flies,

And our souls are all the same,

If you fly up high enough.

If you fly up high enough—

As far as the Voyagers

Will probably do the trick—

You can get past all the clues

Flies, souls, and angels exist.

The first radio broadcasts

Are pretty far out there now,

But they’re awfully weak waves

Rippling interstellar space.

Sometimes we wonder, what if

We’re far from the only, just

The earliest? Earth isn’t

Young, you know. Four billion years

Is a significant chunk

Of what’s gone on past the bang.

What if you’d have to be first

Or close to it, and the last

One surviving the setbacks,

To get as complicated

As all this, to start sending

Waves of signals and robots?

We could be the first ones here,

The first arrivals of thoughts

Per se, still lonely for years.