Atlantis, Mom

 

I can still see my mother's eyes light up at the word,

Atlantis

A mythical place,

a mysterious story,

a continent,

was it more advanced than ours?

A place where peace 

(was it peaceful?)

was established by sensible

(were they?)

Humans.

A place where utopia was found,

did it teeter on the edge?

Was it doomed for failure

or was it just

coincidence,

that cataclysm that sunk the 

perfect civilization?

When we look for 

Atlantis,

Do we really want to finally find it?

Was it meant to always be a myth we tell ourselves?

That peaceful utopias 

can never be truly found?

When we name a ship 

Atlantis,

did we ever think that it would be a mothballed exhibit 

at the space museum

that costs 15 bucks and parking to show your kid

what a special thing this was?

When the future travelers of the universe

find

Atlantis,

the ship

and scrape away the dirt

covering the words, 

ATLANTIS,

Will they wonder

What these Humanoids thought when they named

a ship for a lost continent?

Or will they merely ho hum at the early human space travel

keeping within the gravitational pull of the Earth,

still barely scratching the space exploration,

doing more to explore

with our unmanned crafts 

and the Hubble camera.

Atlantis, where are you?

My Mother was there once,

in another time and place,

I saw it in her eyes.