We read your letter, everything
You said was right and important,
Full of your warmth and honesty.
We’ve thought about it endlessly
But we’re young, change is what we want;
We like space, this move is a future
Claire and I can plan for and picture.
There are a million miles of unknowns
And I admit we’re apprehensive
But we have each other, it’s not as if
This is Knox Johnson sailing off alone
Avoiding scurvy and arctic typhoons.
No, it is, and like “man on the moon”
It’s our generation’s claim to be first
To pull back a frontier, a paradigm,
To change the way the world imagines
Itself, ourselves, for this is a new birth.
It’s not like nineteenth century Australia
All our ties severed forever,