Within The Asteroid Belt
Lyn McConchie
first published in The Fractal
There ghosts among the asteroids,
The nameless dead of many races, creeds and laws,
Miners, whose bodies float in deep black space,
and colonists, where some forgot,
the environment is hostile,
and died of that forgetting.
But those who lived-
bred children who remember
and few of us die now, frozen in solitude and silence.
They would not thank us for our gratitude:
those tough earth-bred,
who came for profit, stayed for love,
betrayed by frozen ice-ringed beauty.
Yet we-the sons and daughters – do remember
those who died.
No names, no faces, just the fact, they died.
And we remember space is not our natural home
We survive within our belt of rocks and tiny planets.
Yes, there are ghosts among the asteroids!
