The Fading Signals
by Mikal Trimm

Silicone-based, crystalline beings
as frail as an old widow’s whisper,
their thoughts sparking light-fast
through the near-absolute Kelvinic chill,
their memories one, their understanding
complete, their knowledge incalculable,
alone in the cosmos, they thought, they posited,
they knew —

Until echoes of their carbon-based kin
arrived carried by dying radio waves;
the Grand Annunciation
of the Gods of humankind:  Sid and Milty,
Burns and Benny, Amos and Andy and
Jackie and Lucy, Lucy, Loooceeey —

Vibrations, attempts to tune themselves
to the alien frequencies, then failed harmonics,
dissonance, feedback, fractures, and finally
one piercing note of intolerable stress —

And Mankind is alone in the Universe.
Finally...