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.