Poem: High, Higher, Highest

High, High­er, Highest
Samuel Hazo
Viewed from space, the world’s
impersonal.
                     France appears,
but no Frenchmen.
                                          Then Germany,
with­out one German.
                                                    Regardless,
the rich­est man on earth
pays three hun­dred thousand
for a ten-minute flight by rocket
at three thou­sand miles per hour
to see every­thing below
from six­ty-two miles straight up.
He’s mak­ing busi­ness plans
for space, begin­ning with Mars
and the moon.
                             There’s ample
prece­dent to show how profit
motivates.
                   After we mapped
the earth as we imag­ined it,
we matched what we imagined
with the world as it would look
when pho­tographed from space.
We did the same with rivers,
lakes and seas.
                             We kept
the orig­i­nal names unchanged
for every­thing we saw
as far as we could fly.
From seashores to the stratosphere
the world was seen as property
that men could bar­gain for and buy.
We see it now the same
while prof­i­teers debate how best
to adver­tise and sell the sky.