Believing Is Belonging (Everything Else Is World)

Ah, life, home of spectacular
Views and horrible conditions,

Complicated, among humans,
Ever further by belonging—

Humans don’t just have comfort zones,
Safe spaces, close kin, and large packs

Like normal social animals—
Humans combine all these with signs,

Not only for territories
(Of course, of course), but to keep faith

With others who are not safe, not
Close kin, and not comfortable,

By interlocking symbolic
Calculus of the fictional,

Of belonging, hence believing.
The views from the summits obtained

By faith are optimal, stellar,
Astronomical, orbital,

The whole blue world in silhouette
From the Moon, the surface of Mars,

From robots through rings of Saturn
And straight past the Heliopause

On one horrible condition—
Live knowing faith means perdition.