It is not, of course, a literal longing
An actual yearning for some terra firma unlike our own
(The vistas promised her elders
In the pages of children’s science encyclopedias,
Jetson-esque lunar traffic jams and hourly interplanetary shuttles
Failing to materialize as prophesied,
The future being a pastel, underwhelming version of our hopes)
But things unrealized, ethereal but substantial,
Their very lack of corporeality giving them a solidity,
A genuineness that those subjects of everyday aspirations
No longer possess, stripped of all semblance of magic,
And she has made a rather discontented compact with all of that,
Choosing to cast her lot with such that this plane has to offer,
But her memories can be fanciful things,
And not party to such contracts,
And in her mind she is whisked away to the bus ride
To see the cosmos projected on the school planetarium
In the cow-town school up in Poplar Ridge,
Her heart quickening as the darting stars
And the great, ponderous Jupiter
Waxed and waned on the building’s dome,
Her fifth-grade group among the last to see such a show
Before the gears in the works,
Impractical and wildly expensive to replace
Sheared and came to a halt for the final time.