The challenge by my eldest daughter, Angelique, goes on.  In return for sharing the incomparable writing styles and lessons that might be garnered from an old television series called The Twilight Zone, she asked for one simple thing.  “Daddy, write me a poem for each of the episodes, please?”  Were I a better writer, maybe these would be a lot shorter and hopefully more skillfully done.  Such luxuries not being mine, these are what they are.

For The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 20, Elegy:

Elegy
by Michael Romani

The time; the day after one too many tomorrows
A rocket ship's flight from the Earth's sorrow
Into some small corner of this jaded universe
Parched for drops of hope to quench man's thirst
Three men are lost up in their quiet emergency
Searching for home with a sense of deep urgency

Some things cannot be seen and are only felt
In this hand of cards that mankind has been dealt
Down to their last drops of fuel at their landing
The situation is dire, alarming and demanding
The astronauts have landed beneath two suns
So their story begins and cannot be undone

Its a small farm whose inhabitants are suspended
Seemingly as though as their lives simply ended
Suspended animation shakes these three men
As they meet it over and over again
In the distance, the music plays on
But the concert is over; all signs of life are gone

A small debate ensues as to this shared illusion
The sights and sounds of home discussed as mere delusion
In a possibility of time and on the nature of time
Where the assumed principles are broken as though a crime
In which a clock without hands illustrates the pristine
As the astronauts stare into the faces of their fellow human beings

Separating, the men go out on a subtle reconnaissance 
Seeking desperately and hoping to make some sort of sense
A rap-a-tap-tapping on the edge of eternity's dark door
Focusing on the romance found within the spaces they explore
Without a single glimpse of motion anywhere to be found
Despite the plentiful conveyance of emotions that abound

Their stress gives away to a snapping, viscous strain
When a stranger awakes with a grin and no sign of pain
Not knowing this, down and down city streets they walk
In the quiet and peace where nobody listens and no one talks
It's a nice place to visit, but, they would not want to live here
Though, it is just that, without a choice, it seems very clear

Small town Victorian, charming and revealing
The men walk on barely holding at concealing
Their fear until a stranger bids them welcome
The astronauts start to wonder and then some
In moments, it is clarified, he is maybe a curator
For this seeming museum with its unknown creator

Mr. Wickwire is demandingly asked for explanation
As they talk of war and survival with fascination
It turns to be that this is actually mankind's cemetery
In a monument to eternal peace seemingly so elementary
Glasses are lifted in this most excellent of toasts
To eternal peace, Mr. Wickwire is the perfect host

That tale is revealed of contentment being sold
For the deceased to find all the happiness foretold
In this place where all dreams seem to come true
After all the dreaming has stopped for me and you
Everlasting peace is offered and given by the caretaker
As a servant to all in his role as humble soul shaper

Mr. Wickwire turns out to be a very pleasant automaton
Providing his services as programmed off and on
The toast he offered brings eternity's ebb and flow
As it courses through the astronauts' veins - peace grows
Although they had landed with no intention to do any harm
The caretaker knows this fades; war is part of humanity's charm

Three men who once had simply been momentarily lost
Three men shared only one wish, wanted at any cost
Now fate laughs as they are exhibited on their rocket home
For the rest of eternity, they will never, ever be alone
A practical joke that seems to stretch from star to star
In the Twilight Zone, home is never all that far

.. A tale retold, for my beautiful daughter, Angie.  May her mind come up with ever more clever and interesting stories than her father might ever share with her.  Should she ever read this blog, there is one thing I want her to always know.  That her daddy loves her from the moon and back and that’s how it will always be.