The Weekly Poem

Space Tourists

Richard Branson’s Spaceport in New Mexico is almost ready to send ‘space tourists’ off on a two-and-a-half hour jolly, for $200,000 a pop.

I’d give two hundred thousand dollars

To travel through the lost

Expanse of waste in outer space.

What luck. That’s just the cost.

I would not spend my hard-earned wad

On sturgeon or a surgeon

Or pay for more to help the poor.

So thanks, Sir Richard Virgin.

Now when I’m on a Branson train

That’s running very late

I’ll get to gloat at those who float

Above us, stripped of weight,

And when the automatic doors

Fly open to the touch

I’ll dream of trips on mother-ships.

Oh Richard, thanks so much.

And when the tannoy grates my ears

And excuses are climactic

I’ll raise a toast to those who boast

That they have gone Galactic.

Or when my patience, stopped at stations,

Gives out, or is eroding,

I’ll say my prayers that millionaires

May be, above, exploding.