How many species went extinct, as earth’s long ages came and went? How many creatures lived and died before a human first drew breath? And who, beneath a starry sky or pondering a fossil bone has never written, said or thought: “Are we unique? Are we alone?” What other forms of life exist on planets circling distant stars, remote from Saturn and the Sun, from Venus, Jupiter and Mars? What sound waves, senses, forms of speech in print, or thought, or chiseled stone have prompted other minds to ask, “Are we unique? Are we alone?” If we could slip the bonds of light and leap to any distant star, would we go there to pick a fight or learn how other life-forms are? If we and they could truly meet and share what each has seen and known would we survey the skies and ask “Are we unique? Are we alone?” Dispelling wistfulness and pride we’ll tend the only earth we know. Resisting cosmic suicide we’ll bend our song to righting wrong; comparing multicolored tribes with delta streams’ divergent flow. We’ll claim what faiths at best have known: “We are unique, but not alone.”