High, Higher, Highest

                                          Viewed from space, the world’s
                                           impersonal.
                                                                France appears,
                                           but no Frenchmen.
                                                                                     Then Germany,
                                           without one German.
                                                                                               Regardless,
                                           the richest man on earth
                                           pays three hundred thousand
                                           for a ten-minute flight by rocket
                                           at three thousand miles per hour
                                           to see everything below
                                           from sixty-two miles straight up.
                                           He’s making business plans
                                           for space, beginning with Mars
                                           and the moon. 
                                                                         There’s ample
                                           precedent to show how profit
                                           motivates.
                                                              After we mapped
                                           the earth as we imagined it,
                                           we matched what we imagined
                                           with the world as it would look
                                           when photographed from space.
                                           We did the same with rivers,
                                           lakes and seas.
                                                                          We kept
                                           the original names unchanged
                                           for everything we saw
                                           as far as we could fly. 
                                           From seashores to the stratosphere
                                           the world was seen as property
                                           that men could bargain for and buy.
                                           We see it now the same
                                           while profiteers debate how best 
                                           to advertise and sell the sky.

Copyright © 2022 by Samuel Hazo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“This is essentially a poem about the misinterpretation of what ‘height’ means. The misinterpretation associates it with importance, prestige, merit, and other things with which it has only an implied relationship. The implied relationships misguide many lives.”
—Samuel Hazo