outsmarted

​we have really done it now
last month we shot a dart into a cute little moon
peacefully orbiting its mommy asteroid
seven million miles away
knocking it silly
 
imagine just having a pleasant star-time day
then getting knifed by a sharp blade
traveling at fourteen thousand miles an hour
all because the science girls and boys tell us 
this bow and arrow might save us someday
 
they claim to have looked back sixty-six million years 
when our lush rock got jolted 
by a six-mile-wide angry piece of broken star
[ncoming at forty-five thousand miles an hour
releasing the force of a billion hiroshimas 
 
a fiery rooster-tail plume of earth rock 
shot halfway to the moon
local temperatures hemorrhaged 
many times hotter than the sun’s surface
fire-storming the mammal-packed forests 
 
oceans tsunamied over the land
followed by a deep sunless freeze 
below methane and carbon-soaked skies
spiked with sulfuric acid rain 
leaving a few microbe clusters to struggle
   
we beat the odds 
evolving out of the spoiled dinosaur-rich soup
and poisoned soil
to become the new royalty on the rock
 
maybe the creator was so freaked 
by what had been wrought
we were granted a brain capable of deflecting 
the next random asteroid
 
maybe the science kids are onto something
or just maybe some more refined organism
will spring forth after our self-created collision 
with reality