Let them take to the air before
it leaves, and afterwards, to space.
This rock is alternately wet or dry,
iced or dusted on the surface, hot
at heart, and withering. They,
they say, are going to the stars
in office, seated at a desk
in uniforms of solid air
and senseless, but for instruments.
I might be blind naked, but I know
the star of earth is literally internal.

The independent subway of the mind
must go beneath the crust and beds
of rivers, lovers, and the dead
to hunt, as end, means, and cause,
the star they say they’re flying for,
straitjacketed in padded cells inside
a weapon, watching face-mask television.