In the rush and pull
of asynchronous orbits,
in helmeted and suited suspension,
we tap the well of space
and are gone
with the swimming light.

We fall sunward,
yet even with the great
lasered disks of ice in tow
our shifting umbra
is but a speck
on the gutted shell of Callisto.

Our near weightless journey
is as tedious as
the silence we traverse.

Yet everywhere our caravans have passed,
from the bumpy free-floating
geodesic of New Chicago
to the boomtowns of Mars,
we have become the stuff of legend.

Water-bearers.
Nomads and life-givers.
Through the desert of the stellar night.