We move through a hall like children
in a playground tunnel. Through the tube window is not a jungle-gym
or a sandbox, but we will be upside down in a tangle of metal
and sand awaits us. I do not have my trusty plastic bucket or shovel,
but rather air-lock capsules and expensive equipment.
I see the thundering ship waiting for us,
its rockets anxious. It detaches,

pushes off from the world. We are to be the first humans
to set foot on Mars. It could be up to three years, they say,
before we return home. My shipmates look out to the stars,
their light, their clusters. The moon is coming clearly
into vision. I walk over to the opposite side.

The Earth sits back there, vanishing. I look up toward it,
dream of reaching it one day. I see the vast blue oceans
consuming the planet. My eyes sail past them,
notice the strip of land where I vacationed as a child
and the places I have lived. I can't see the people,
only geography. I see the expanding desert,
the drifting in the grains of sand.

I can see the Earth and the moon at the same time now and feel
that this is how they were meant to be viewed. On one,
the people I know will perhaps throw a welcome party for me,
three years from now. I cannot tell from here.

We near Mars, our new home. One day it is expected to become
a permanent residence. I will take a girl to the moon one day,
and we'll flip a coin to tell us where to live, but it will slip away from us,
out into the vacuum where I am now.