"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.