I can give you a lift
Out to the mid-Jupiter station,
But this trip is just
A quick pick-up and turn-around run,
So I am able to get you
No farther.
From there,
It is a short shuttle hop
To the outer station and,
From there,
Any number of freighters
Use Jupiter’s gravity
To fling themselves
Out to the Oort Cloud,
Spend a few months
Collecting comets and various
Rocky matters to be refined
To their constituent elements
And then sold to cover salaries,
Supplies, maintenance and
The license. Always those
Vagabond ships need more vagabonds.
Pay is not so great,
But it is a good opportunity
To get yourself out of the public eye
For perhaps a dozen years, come back
Clean of historical entanglements:
Return as someone new, any former past
Too far past for anyone to care.
And, even if anyone does still care,
They will agree that, bored beyond reclamation
On the slow, joyless freighter’s crawl home,
You are not the person you once were,
Or should otherwise have been
Were it not for interplanetary ennui.
Happily, your secret by then
Will be safe in irrelevance.
