Slip of Stone - Seanan McGuire

Once, we flew beyond this sky And turned our eyes on Heaven's deep. Our lives are hard, but our labors guard The families we keep. But it's sorrowful now We've got to say That although we're coming home today, We will not touch down all that gracefully... For our fuel line's torn and reorbit's burn Means we're crashing down onto New Jersey. Yes, it's true a ship alone Would dissolve and be destroyed, But our ship and crew's bringing with us too Several tons of asteroid. Now we're falling fast But that's not bad; It's the sudden stop that will make folks sad, And the saddest folks in the world will be All the ones who find that we're on their mind When we plummet down on New Jersey. You can say it's nothing but a rock -- We're just alarmist fools. But potentially it has energy Of ten onto the nineteenth joules. And no matter how far they try to run It's a race that physics has always won. The Garden State Will rejoin the sea When shower down onto Princeton town And come falling hard onto New Jersey. Say farewell to New Jersey, To Newark, and to Troy, For they'll all be flat As a roadkilled cat When we shout out 'ship ahoy'. And although it's true We're not dead yet, I have to say, we've got one regret, We're in freefall now, with no delta V -- We don't have the torque to smash old New York, So it's bon voyage to New Jersey.