Enterprise first flew across my television screen when I was twelve years old and she has been my constant companion ever since.
I stood in the desert when I was twenty-three to see Enterprise drop out of the sky and flare, roughly embracing the dry lakebed at a breathtaking speed and trailing a cloud of dust. I was sad to learn that Enterprise would never fly in space; she was too heavy. Still, we love her, don't we, as she poses on display, the first of her kind.
I stood in the desert again when I was fifty to see a smaller enterprise, a feathery and private little affair, drop out of the sky and flare, gently kissing the paved runway before a carnival-like crowd. From this small origin evolved the next Enterprise.
My heart breaks again to see another Enterprise, a young Virgin, come to her end without ever flying in space as she so longed to do, to see her intelligently designed body crumpled in the desert in full view of the world.
Yet Enterprise still flies. She always will. "There are plenty of letters left in the alphabet." And by the time we have used all of them, we will have met civilizations with other alphabets. And still she will fly.
Thomas Gangale's Song Lyrics and Free Verses
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