Size / / /
"The nights are wholesome—then no planets strike"
–Hamlet, Act I, Scene i
Green seas of grass
wave in archived footage,
verdant crescent grins
around farm circumferences
on this outback planet
half-way to nowhere.
Brow plowed by deep furrows,
she scans the desolation
of a battered surface
pockmarked by asteroids,
the constant rain of ten rotations
now stilled.
Stranded from the outer galaxy,
she signs over her last ranch credits
but flashes her best come-hither smile
at the tall terraform engineer
and takes a gamble on twenty years
of wholesome nights.