Luna is a silent world,
a wasteland of sere beauty.
It’s “seas” are dust and waterless;
Rainfall? Zero, absolutely!

In this place where birds don’t sing
and nothing green can grow.
We built the Armstrong Geodome,
in secret, years ago.

Here, on the “dark” side of the moon,
in a Mare without a name.,
a climate controlled paradise
was built, and workers came.

Some were miners, strong and buff
who search for this world’s gold.
Some are research scientists
one hundred fifty men, all told.

In Twenty Forty Seven
all hell broke loose on Earth
There were nuclear exchanges
and what followed next was worse.

A winter like none other;
we listened, helpless, as they died.
Starvation is the cruelest fate
for any mother’s child.

One by one they all fell silent,
the great cities of that Orb.
Deaths occurred in magnitudes
the human mind can not absorb.

We struggled, yes, but we survived
without the ships from home.
One Hundred fifty adult males,
like the mariners of old.

We mourned the Loves we’d left behind,
We shuddered at their fate.
Our Refuge was our prison;
We lived deprived of child or mate.

The streets of Armstrong are always clean
as cleaning bots are on patrol.
but here no children laugh or play,
it’s a town without a soul.

Two decades we spent in that place
then came the words for which we yearned:
Atmospheric radioactivity
to safe levels had returned.

I was on the first ship home
to San Francisco Bay.
The landmarks all were flattened
The Golden Gate in ruins lay.

We mortals wept, I will not lie
Our cradle had become our grave;
The streets of home were silent,
there was no one left to save.

Terra is a silent world,
a wasteland of sere beauty.
It’s “seas” are toxic, lifeless now;
Children? Zero, absolutely!