Kris Beaver
Summary of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
The alien, tall, polite, handsome, bright—
a nifty catch in the fifties
with nuclear destruction in sight,
especially for a war widow with a pre-teen son.
She needed a spouse who got things done,
someone better than the lousy fiancé
she’d been betting on. Problem was
this alien’s mission excluded love and marriage.
He’d been sent to do what must be done—
save the universe by destroying Earth.
That’s why his traveling dome honed in on D.C.
landing near a manly stone monument for
maximum visibility.
To save their homeland from invasion,
troops and tanks surrounded his ship. Still,
the alien stepped out, came down the ramp,
held forth a life-saving gift and was shot.
Of course. The army doesn’t horse around.
That’s when a metallic Frankenstein appeared,
a gigantic interstellar officer with more than enough
super-power to destroy the galaxy. It began
vaporizing weapons left and right. Citizens, too
frightened to move watched in awe, saw the injured
alien command the monster: Stop! Don’t kill them
off just yet. Give me a chance to detect if they’re
worth saving.
So the robot closed its laser-eyes and
stood still while the alien familiarized himself
with the neighborhood. He met the widow, her son
and an Einstieny scientist who thought humankind needed
proof the alien meant business. That’s when the alien
taught Earth a lesson by turning power off world-wide.
This shook folks up enough to listen. He warned leaders
of impending doom if they didn’t learn to get along,
then took off into space, leaving the impulsive
human race to work things out. But we know they just
continued living life as one long, egocentric vacation.
An issue also addressed in the Book of Revelation.
Kris Beaver’s poems have appeared in ERGO: The Bumbershoot Literary Magazine and Spindrift, among other journals. She holds a BA in English from Whitman College (where she twice received the Delta Gamma Creative Writing Award) and an MEd from Lesley University. Recently retired after a long career as an elementary school teacher, she has returned to writing poetry. [The classic Indolent Books career path, by the way. —The Editor.]
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