we thought that we could
simply trade labor
for a glimmer
of its opposite—
for the long, happy,
untrammeled,
callus-free life
of the children we
once resembled
on another distant Earth,
where the moon
routinely takes the place
of the sun
without
the mechanistic explanation
of eclipse?
Would those kids ever think
that the sweat
of the intellect
is somehow equivalent
to that of the flesh—
that safety is a substitute
for the raison d'être
of love,
or an orbital ellipse
for the halo's perfect circle—
that one thing
ever truly takes
the place of another
when they know,
even in the throes
of their youth,
that two pairs of lips
cannot make,
or replace—
or even summarize
the bliss—
of that nervous
first kiss?