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             Opening Dedication

       Across the expanses I come,
       Un-daunted by fear,
       Un-diminished with distance.

       Of these things I know,
       And yet I come.

       To greet my fellow explorers,
       To see their world,
       To hear its sounds,
       To smell its earth,
       To feel its jagged rocks, 
          and icy fjords,
       To talk to its many wondrous forms.

       I come, O small blue-green world....     



Song the First

Never stop to try.

Never stop to cry for those who suffer.

Never stop to hold joy in your heart.

Never stop to rankle against tyranny.

Never stop.

For in that never stopping is the dream of us all.



Song the second

(notes from a journey that we began
 four million years ago in Africa)

In the vast depts of space 
   -- what beauty awaits us!

New worlds -- with their promise of
              new-ness

Un-enfolded into the old 
   -- embracing the new:

        EXPLORE!

Wondrous worlds await.   Go!

Be not a complacent worm with arms and legs
   -- become exploded into the very heart 
      of death.  Brave the air-less void.

      EXPLORE!

Sit not at home rocking comfortably
    listening to your arteries 
    harden.

Walk not with head down, pulling the
     heavy plow behind you as you 
     plod through the dust.

Moan and complain not about the flick
     of the tendral, or the snap of
     the ratchet.

     EXPLORE!

Face not the complacency of the mundane,

Face not the droll repetititive cycle of
     re-do-ing what you have done a 
     thousand hundred million times before.

Face outward, upward, into the very cosmos itself.

     THAT WHICH GAVE US LIFE,

The burning stars them-selves,

The quantum-cold of space-time itself,

The INFINITE PAIN and INFINITE WONDER of worlds
    yet un-seen or imagined.

Of light-sails spread, capturing a distant sun's
   rays to light-speed speeded,

Of cometary halo's cold gaseous realm,

Of death on some distant moon,

Of dramas un-imaginable, but told by 
   poets, painters, and dancers from
   a trillion, trillion worlds,

   in a trillion, trillion, trillion, galaxies....

   EXPLORE!

Celebrate!  Remember!  But. explore.



Song the third

I sing a sad song of teers that run down my
old, withered face.  Of teers of the fathers
and sons, and mothers and daughters who 
mourne.  

Of lovers' empty beds,
Of words left un-said,
Of joys ne'er to be shared,
Of crying that will not end.

but.

It is not from some bitter war that I 
sing this song (of that song, I am
yet to sing, for the war is as yet
not begun).

I sing this song for those who left
our world.  Never to return.

Never to return.

For a world spins on into the darkness
of the night.

For a world soon gets down to the 
humdrum of life.

For a world can not wait to kill in
the name of land, and gold, and dross.

(and oil)

For a world 

    soon 



                              forgets.

but

I can not.


I sing a song of a wondrous world.
Of worms that dig her dirt,
Of birds that fly,
Of a wondrous/terrible creature called Mon,
that looks up at the sky,

at the stars,

at the moon,

and asks:  Why can't I?



Song the Last

There is a world,
and upon it a small creature pushes 
    through the soil, 

towards the smell of fresh rain in the air above.


The creature struggles to push,

          to get free...


The creature struggles to 



               see

(sotto voice)

It is the beginning of the next song.

'for'

indeed.

There can NEVER be any last song.