Revision

Robert Goddard

Looking into boosters
like crystal balls.
You had to see
the future,

in the exhausted
October morning
as you split sheet metal
like skin
to build the house
for the original
liquid fuel.

In a later stage
of the day,
you took off
the nosecone
to install
the internal
systems
of the first
gyroscope.

Dreams become reality
You said.

You believed,

as the libel media
critiqued
in the name
of the earthbound
humanity
convention.

When the world war
ended
and the cold one
began,

the army questioned
von Braun’s boys.

Fresh from the Reich,
they injured egos
when they confessed:

you wrote their texts.