“Life May Have Begun More Than Once” by Jynne Dilling Martin

A poem by alumna Jynne Dilling Martin (poetry, ’06) appears online as the Poem-A-Day on Flavorwire for Wednesday, April 23, 2014: 

Life May Have Begun More Than Once

The spacecraft will exit the magnetosphere tomorrow;
the Soviet polar expedition is allotted a bimonthly bath.

Years before, an explorer halfway into A Broken Promise
abandoned the dog-eared novel in his reindeer skin sack.

Up north, herds of reindeer shake off snow and lift
antlered heads as a pinprick of light dissolves in the sky;

Dmitri Klimov emerges wrinkled, pink and howling,
numb from his icy dive. Back then you knew nothing:

now you know how to begin again. The geologist
kneeling on barren nunatak stuffs a briefcase full

of Antarctic fossils: insects, pollen grains, roots and fronds…

…

Finish reading online.