October 1957

Before midnight when the dew was heavy

on the back lawn of my father’s house

on Spring Street and the dark had pealed

back the outside skin of the town and exposed

it naked to the glorious night sky,  my friend Clark

and I saw the dawn of the age we live in still.

A single dot of light moved unstrobing across

the fall constellations moving from the southwest

over the common and Lanoie’s to the northeast

toward the Lemon Squeezer and the power lines.

It wasn’t much to see and left the stage like a chorus

girl who was never meant to be a star.  Still, we saw

it and few today are alive to say they did.  We saw

it in Goffstown, and we saw it together.

FG           8/17/2016

Of course it was Sputnik, the size of a grapefruit.  It did nothing but beep just to say I’m here, but what a difference that made – in so many things.  It turned our education from a focus on the liberal arts to science and math.  Clark Bagnall, my friend of a lifetime, thrived in the technology and all the rest of it. But I shook my head walked away and sat down on a stone wall to drink a beer and ponder . . . and sixty years on from that night I sit and ponder still. I wonder how many others remember seeing Sputnik?