If the scythe of heaven were to suddenly swing like a pendulum from a point, sing through the atmosphere—unthinking, unblinking—and divide this aluminum tube clean through; and if we were tumbling under the crystal black canopy of the cosmos, startled in that moment to find ourselves so cold and the stars so fiery-white; if we were falling, limbs akimbo, thousands of meters into a quilt of blue clouds and, below, the dark Pacific; if this were we: a still life, composed in the open air of night, our eyes wide, our cries piling up in our mouths uncried; if this were we, who among us would be judged best for his fall?
Michael Booth was a professor of ecology at Principia College.