The Truth About Tigers

From the dawn of the twentieth century’s flight,
When Orville Wright, amidst apprehension and awe,
Defied gravity on the shores of North Carolina,
His quick ascent, a mere dozen seconds in the air,
Ushered in the era of man among the clouds.

A brief leap in time, just eight years past this wonder,
Saw Giulio Gavotti, high above Libya’s age-old sands,
His hands releasing the first shadows of war from the skies,
In those early days of conflict
Between Italy and the Ottoman Empire,
Transforming the blue yonder into a new battleground.

Then, as the mid-century world watched,
Colonel Paul Tibbets, in the cockpit of the Enola Gay,
Steered away from Hiroshima,
A mushroom cloud rising, an uninvited colossus,
Reaching its ominous fingers towards an indifferent sky,
Marking an end, and a beginning –

A world locked at war,
Now entering the age of a relentless arms race.

In just four short decades of what we call progress,
From those first trembling ascents,
To skies laden with the harbingers of destruction,
Humanity, in a generational blink,
Mastered the grim art of erasing cities
In a solitary, blinding flash.

It’s no wonder that the aliens keep their radios off
When they glide past our chaotic corner of the cosmos.