Aliens Calling

Are you alone?

No, not in your life.

But in the grander scheme of things?

Things that may lie beyond your comprehension.

Things that may still lie obscured in your sight.

The most-evolved being on Earth.

Jiving to your own individual verse.

Master of none but your whims and fancies.

Master of the planet’s resources and features.

But while confidence in oneself still tricks this being,

in the supposed wilderness that we call the universe,

Do you think in all those places beyond,

there exists a weird crop of creatures?

Are they friends with gentle minds?

Or are they foes with cruel faces?

Or are they just another weathered race?

Striving to make their own residence a better place?

You, mayhaps, are not interested yet.

Having had your fill of the Spielberg-created fear.

Caught up with your dreams and your fights all your life round.

But, there are mysteries still unsolved here,

And mysteries of the cosmos abound.

Oh, and they may not turn up as friends most humane,

The ‘War of the Worlds’ may still become a reality.

Then, what you will need is that ‘most-evolved’ brain

Or the visitors will have your fealty.

“Either we are alone in the universe or we are not.

Both the eventualities are equally terrifying.”

You may not be gung-ho about this thought,

but this was what Arthur Charles Clarke opined.

(Note: This is one of the five entries that made me climb into the Top 50 writers in India list in Hashtag Kalakar's Poetry and Creative Writing Competition Season 1, held in 2021)