23 | Poetry by Paul David Adkins, Winner of the Central NY Book Award for Poetry

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My Uncle Jake, the One Who Drank a Lot, Explains to Me the Origins of Shakespeare and Jesus and Newton

They were aliens.

They were dropped somewhere south of London,
just north of the Sea of Galilee
in the dead
of night, their marching orders engraved
on metal sheets,

which the agents read
then melted with their ray guns,
before burying all traces of their space-lives
in the desert,
in the moors.

The saucer lights were off,
the engines muffled.

This was all a secret.

You will go and change
the world. You will go
embrace these savages

who will, in turn, hang, embrace, imprison
you.

We will return
to pick you up
or not.

We will keep you
in our prayers.

And the spaceship lifted
silent as a moon.

One figure,
silhouetted against a tilting portal,
saluted,
flashed his triple-lidded eyes farewell.

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