Regions Beyond the Habitable

Draco wraps around the pole.
I can see both from the yard
Before dawn, when no one else
In the neighborhood is up,

But you know I can’t visit.
You know Draco’s a fiction,
And that the polestar wanders
Within historical time

Because our planet wobbles.
I might as well be staring
Out the window of a cell.
Astronauts walk in the yard,

Take turns around the Big House,
Which is only big to us,
Then return to tell the rest
Of us lifers about it.

It’s just perspective, of course,
This sense that the Earth is small,
We’ve seen it all, while night lies
Beyond the habitable.

It locked into place quickly.
People dreamed of traveling
At least as far as planets,
Exploring and settling them,

As if it were a sure thing
Just a few decades ago,
And anyway, there was Earth
Left to discover. Now, no.

Behold our medieval world—
Here’s the familiar, ruined,
And beyond the known only
The uninhabitable.

There’s nowhere material
Left to go. We must be good.
There’s so little Eden left.
I like the stars in darkness.