021416c

Alas, Poor Yorick

Our home a start on unpolluted world,

The generation ship a played-out wreck,

Still twice a day she glints across the sky,

Where lately landing shuttle trails have curled,

The huts and fields of green that cluster round,

A tiny spot of that familiar hue,

Amid a sweep of indigo and blue,

That flourishes upon its natal ground.

A day may come when all this world's our stage,

And green and green and green is all the rage,

The native life is gone or circumscribed,

Pressed into books or painted onto walls,

Or else Earth's greenery won't thrive at all,

Our crumbling bones a purple curtain hide.