Colony (poem)

Do you dream of Alpha Centauri?

And worlds ripe for hope and glory?

Leaving behind, the pale blue Earth,

This long cradle of our birth.

Will your rockets blaze their trails?

Or will you fly on solar sails?

Carrying forth your mission bold,

Through four light years icy cold.

Decades long tears of separation,

Frozen hard in hibernation.

Till at last your eyes do see,

The distant sphere of Centauri B.

Then you arrive with fuel spent,

Lock orbit and begin descent.

On the surface your ship will sit,

A lone figure, atop barren regolith.

At then end of this great run,

You will go, under a binary sun.

There you build, your new homes,

Under hardened plastic domes.

But what if you are not alone?

There you find more than stone?

Can you live side-by-side?

Without committing bloody genocide?

All history reads the same,

We all need, another to blame.

But this thread, let us close.

Not to battle, imagined foes.

A whole web, you must set in motion.

Free, unchain, an ice-locked ocean.

Till the soil can nourish root,

You must eat, hydroponic fruit.

With this work, you must bring,

To this land, its first spring.

This planet at last manned,

Its landscape, shaped by hand.

Till at last you leave this coil,

Your body lie, in alien soil.

Your life force sacrificed and spent,

In this great experiment.

Then shall pass a generation,

That holds your life, in veneration.

Will they remember and keep their stations?

Or break into, fractious nations?