This selection is included in NonBinary Review #21, available here.

“… Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

“… And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us.”

—The War of the Worlds, Book One: The Eve of War HG Wells

We imagine you, earthbound, huddled
over primitive transmission systems
scanning frequencies of silence
for one drop of stellar truth.
 
Your Teslas and Marconis
tip-tap-toeing at our windows.
Eavesdropping on your elders
Testing, testing, 1,2,3.
 
Do  you really want to hear
 the galaxial mockery you  inspire?
Half your planet still believes
you were created
in some image, any image.
We would laugh, if physiology allowed.
Playing hide and seek with data
to avoid the bitter truth:
You are accidental. Every species is.
 
Perhaps sentience bloomed on an inferior branch
of Terra’s evolutionary tree.
Maybe the dinosaurs died of embarrassment
seeing you monkeys gain control.
 
Here, in the cold clarity of space
there is only room for hard science
and harder truths.
The universe has no special interest
in a middling backwater planet
or  the welfare of its apes.
 
The bleeps and pleeps you manifest
at the edges of our hearing
shouting down a stellar well to summon imaginary friends.      
These tell us  more than you suspect.
 
We have been waiting here
impatient to see you shuffle off your wonder
and stride out into the universe
armed with more than words and hopes.
 
While  you beam your invitations,
#lookwhatwecando  #comeandplay
Crowing to the exo-verse
how grown up you are
what smart games you play
what your meat is made of .
 
We have heard you children of Terra
and we are coming,  someday
sooner than you suspect
to accept your invitation.
Can you hear us now?

Carrie L. Clickard (aka Clarice Radrick) is an internationally published author and poet. In addition to her children’s books, Carrie’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Mirror Dance, Light, Literary Nest, Defenestration, Poet’s Haven and Enchanted Conversations. For more information please visit www.clclickard.com and www.clariceradrick.com