Sputnik

My father pulled me out of bed to watch one orbit
our house in the suburbs. It was December; cold; still.

He pulled me out onto the lawn and pointed upwards
while his free hand lifted me off the ground.

I looked up to see Sputnik move through a cloud
and then reappear as a tiny silver blinking speck.

My father stiffened. "It's the dawn of a new age."
I wondered why he hadn't awakened my mother.

Later that night, I opened one eye for green monsters.
I had the impression something big had occurred

that day, like the arrival of arthropods-
or the pre-telling of a father’s unraveling vision.

The next day I was told about a little dog named
Laika who rode in Sputnik, who had survived,

and was now living somewhere in outer space. 
This for me was better than invaders from mars.

But today, searching through the B section in the
Boston Globe, I found that Laika never made it-

in fact, she burned in the first few moments of lift off-
a footnote, an asterisk, like so many other lost dots.

 -Dispatch Litareview, 2009