It was another retrieval-order,
he’d been missing forty-eight hours,
tracker beams calculated his
last known whereabouts
in the Tharsis quadrangle.

I didn’t relish this mission,
red dust had been swirling for days
& the winds were picking up speed,
measured at 100 m.p.h.
It was crazy for Snyder
to have gone out in the first place.
I remembered his friendly face,
his jovial demeanor & gracious smile.
I felt sad knowing I’d never seen him again.
He was one of the hardest workers.

All the company could ever talk about
were profits, profits & even more profits.
We all knew the risks,
it went with the territory.
Out here on the perimeter,
on the edge of tomorrow,
we lived our lives three-dimensionally,
another day, another dollar, another ***** shirt.
It was the same **** here
as those days we had
back on good ‘ole planet Earth,
working for greed.