A hundred souls have now been called,
Finalists for the one way trip to Mars;
They wait again for numbers to be culled
So they can take a place among the stars.

Knowing they can not return,
Still they choose to feel the thrusters burn,
The first to leave their mother, Earth
Prodigal children, these, their birth to spurn.

And so they wait while science catches up
To give them air and food and liquid sup,
Suspended on their way so they can stand
In thinner air and orange rock and arid sand.

The universe, expanding as it goes, for Earth
Waits patiently as we climb the ladder to the sky
To test the science and find an astral birth,
The outer limit of our human quest for why.

And when we stand some day on rocky Mars
Dissatisfied, we'll look out past old Sol
Peering out for paths to other stars,
The restless quest still burning in our souls.