The 'Verse

… and so, at last, I dig.

For what seemed like an age I stared out

at the pebble-spattered ground stretched around

me – impatient to scratch and scrape my beak through

its dust-caked, sun-baked crust - but did not move,

even though I ached to seek out precious blue

buried beneath the red. Instead, I watched,

and as the sunlight warmed my shining wings, waited…

 

… but finally, I have fed! Tilting back

my weary, wide-eyed head

to bathe in the half-heat of the midnight sun

I can now feel Mars grit in my craw!

Raw, glass-sharp shards of cruel stone

mixed up with puffed up talc-fine dust;

all its iron long since rusted away to leave

behind the subtle tastes of silica, salt and sand…

 

… and now, as I stand alone on this harlequin-patterned

plain, finally I can feel tiny, delicious tongues of flame

flickering in my chest: stubborn TEGA, patiently digesting

its long-awaited first delicious mouthful

of brittle, broken rock and orange oatmeal stone,

and with no-one here to moan and groan

“stop playing with your food!” I will so

enjoy my feast as this Phoenix feeds, at last…

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

 

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Phoenix I was named, and tomorrow

I will finally taste and fly in flame!

Screaming through the martian sky, the light

of my arrival will be bright enough

to put to shame the twin moons’ gloomy glow,

and should those weary rovers far below me

lift their dust-dimmed eyes towards the stars

they’ll see me slicing through their heaven, far

brighter and more glorious than any mere meteor.

And I, wrapped in great flapping sheets

of flame – Barsoom’s own Beowulf, riding

the raging dragon of Entry and Descent –

will cry out loudly “I am here!”

 

I do not fear the landing; nor do I waste

my time with worries of the million ways

my mayfly life could end before I even reach

the frozen ground. If I fail, my broken body found

a hundred years from now,

an almost-not-there stain upon Green Valley’s

barren floor my story will still be

one of victory, for I was never meant to fly;

if Fate had smiled on others meant

to touch the face of Mars I would not even

have been born, and my eyes and hands

and feet would all have flown elsewhere.

 

But here I am! And as Mars looms ever larger

up ahead my dream-dulled head begins

to fill with thoughts of with what I’ll see

tomorrow, when these gritty, sleep-filled eyes

of mine awake and open for the first time.

An endless open plain of ochre stone, painfully

bare, with just a lonely, frost-fringed rock

placed here and there to catch my roving eye?

Or will great boulders stand nearby,

high enough to hide the far horizon from

my view? I’ll know this, and more, soon…

 

One thing I will never know is

The brittle beauty of a starry martian sky.

From my valley home, so close to the gateau-layered pole,

Sol will circle me like a long lost bird;

never rising, never setting,

a molten metal ball rolling ‘round the rim

of my world as I stand alone

in the land of the Shrunken Midnight Sun,

watching my shadow sweep around me

for hour after endless, endless hour.

I shall be a sundial, marking time until I die.

  

Before then, my faithful friends, I long to show you wonders!

But if my flight ends in Mars’ air, and no word

is heard from me again then promise me you’ll send

another in my place, for there are secrets

and surprises here that cry out to be found,

and though I hope to dig beneath the frigid ground

to touch and taste the water there I know

Mars has destroyed more of my kind

than it has granted life. So lift your eyes

up to the sky, and as these final tortuous hours tick by

wish me nothing more than peace, and

keep me company as I sleep.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

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Look…

 

Two specks. Two snowflake flecks of white

drifting through a fire-threaded sky:

a sign that for a brief, bright golden time

Mankind reached out across the Black

and grasped the many mysteries of Mars…

 

Far behind and far, far below, the great hole

of Heimdall gazes at the sky, an empty eye

socket in the ice-scraped skull of the northern

plains, stained and tamed by Time,

sighing as the Phoenix flew on by…

 

Just two full stop dots on a portrait of

a planet far away, but their presence proves

the paws of curious apes reached out and touched

the face of Mars; built a glittering steel butterfly

to try and tell them if they really are Alone…

 

Two mere pin pricks on a pixelled picture, but they

scream into the dark “We failed but tried a second time!”

And like a lamp, lighting up the abyssal martian night,

those Phoenix flames ignited the sense of wonder yet again

in all who watched her landing.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

 

 

 

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The first time I open my sleep-heavy eyes
what alien landscape will curve around me?
A Barsoomian Narnia, with petrified fields
of snow-capped rocks and lonely frost-cracked
boulders, standing boldly beneath the glaring arctic Sun
like shrunken Easter Island statues?
Or will there be no stones to see, just an endless plain
of pale polygons stretching like a crumpled quilt
to the horizon, each icy lily pad a stepping stone
leading my startled eyes to a sky higher and wider
than any ever seen on Mars before..?

I wonder… will that sky be white – a mirror of Old Earth’s
bright Antarctic heaven? – or will it shine with a polished
metal hue, a cathedral-ceiling dome of brittle silver-blue
dwarfing every ridge and rock and stone cupped
in Green Valley’s gentle hands? Perhaps the frigid land
chosen to be my frozen tomb will stand silent
beneath a sea of blushing, perfect pink? Whichever
colour wins, will I witness wind-teased, lacy clouds
racing overhead, chasing each other like children at play,
mocking me with their faerie grace and speed
while I stare up at them helplessly;
my clumsy, manhole cover feet rooted to the frozen ground
as if I were a tree and they were birds?

Around the shrunken Sun I imagine a ring
of hoarfrost-on-Holly fire;
a perfect circle of Mother of Pearl light,
the crowning glory of the first
arctic martian sunset ever seen by Man.
On either side: a soft-edged slice of rainbow;
known as “sundogs” on Old Earth
the first Barsoomians shall call them
“Deja” and “fair Thuvia” in tribute
to the martian maids who stole John
Carter’s heart with just a sigh. And close by,
perhaps, an azure spark – Earth,
glinting as a sapphire gleams
when held up to the Moon until, too soon,
she drops into the burning dusk,
her flickering flame snuffed out…

And when my metal monkey paw claws at the
ground beneath my feet, what sight will greet
me as its dust and dirt are wrenched
and torn apart? Within that long-awaited trench
will my eyes spy only lines of old Noachian ice
or layers of “Can it be..?” green? Will My Mars be
as dead as the burial plains of Sagan’s hero Vikings,
or will my graphs whisper “There is Life here…”?

Soon I will know; soon my eyes
will open on a breathtaking new world,
and though no flag will I unfurl
to flutter and fly o’er Green Valley’s
frigid floor, on Landing Day I’ll stake a claim for
All Mankind, declaring in bold Shakespearean tones:
“We shall know no rest ‘til we have found Life here!”
and slowly, but surely, I'll play my role in that great Quest.

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

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Strange to think a single rose-pink snowflake

floating from the frigid polar sky could have been

the start. Settling on the silent ice as softly as a sigh,

pressing on the white-capped scarp just hard

enough to send a tickle of a tremor

through its gateau-like layers of rock

it shocked the sleeping stones awake,

setting them shivering and quivering just enough

to shake loose a crust of ochre-dusted snow

and send it tumbling to the world below,

blossoming into powder puffs as it scuffed

each ledge and boulder on the way,

spraying veils of flour-fine ice into the

vacuum-thin air before crumping

into the polar plain and billowing away

from the high cliff’s crumbling base…

 

Imagine walking in the Great Wall shadow

of that scarp; delighting in the flint-sharp polar light,

rejoicing in the silence, relishing the peace

when suddenly the ground beneath your feet

begins to quake, and looking up

you see snow flaking off the cliff. Soon rocks and grit

a thousand shades of pink and red

are falling from the sky – a dry waterfall

of icing sugar frost and pollen-fine dust,

rushing through the air to strike the ground

without a sound in a martian mare’s tail cloud

of tan and titian fines that huffs and puffs

towards you, a slow-motion Barsoomian tsunami

as weak as the beating of a faerie’s wing…

Such sights our eyes will never see,

and I cannot help but envy those who, in the future, do.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

 

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Once you all spoke our names with pride;

cried “Godspeed!” as we screamed into the sky

on twin pillars of roaring bright dragonfyre.

You punched bunched fists into the air as

we speared through Florida’s tattered cloud,

the crackling of our engines loud enough

to make you gasp in pain. You watched us

fly and pierce the sky again and again and again…

 

Now you mock us, call us “foolish”,

say we were mistakes that should never

have been made; betray us on your Blogs,

kick us like dogs, turn your backs on

all we have achieved and, with perverse glee,

some even watch half-hoping that we

fail to reach the Dark so they can crow

“See? Another one gone! I told you so!”

 

How soon you forget; how soon you’ll

regret our passing when you see

what takes our place. When Orion finally flies -

that flat-assed capsule on its rocket pencil-thin -

you’ll stop and think “How wrong, how small

it looks.” When Ares eventually reaches out

for the blue you’ll stare into the NewSpace-

conquered sky, remembering how fine we were:

sleek as swans and blizzard white; sunlight

flashing off our wide wings, engines singing

with delight, leaving Earth far, far behind…

 

You’ll fall back on fond memories of com-sats

repaired and spared early orbital graves;

the golden arrays of a good-as-new Hubble,

bathed in sunlight as night turned to day;

seven-hour space-walks by grinning space

voyagers, grappling with struts, nuts and

bolts, their sausage-fat fingers clinging

to spanners and tools, laughing like fools

as Earth turned in silence below, and you’ll know

when you see that first Ares fly

that our lives were triumphs, not mistakes,

and staring into the sky, sighing at those red and white

parachutes flapping and slapping in the wind

you’ll shake your heads sadly and gladly swap the sight

of Orions falling back to Earth with a splash

for that beautiful double-tap crack of Atlantis

heading for home…

 

True, our time may be passing, our Age may be through

but you’ll miss us when we are gone.

No more orbital ballet, RCS pirouetting,

no more space-walkers waving “Hi Mom!”

No more look at that! pictures of tiled wings reflecting

Earth’s sapphire blue oceans and skies;

only memories of launches and Welcome Home landings

that brought tears to a weary world’s eyes.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2007

 

 

 

 

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Stand church statue-still on a so-clear-it-sends-chills

down-your-spine night and you’ll feel

the Earth trembling beneath your feet, swooning

as she’s swept along in the Galaxy’s carousel waltz,

dancing with grace at a chaste, respectful distance

from its myriad sequin-starred partners.

Look up and imagine those pollen-thick, pinprick

suns as the flickering flames of lighters being

held aloft, waved from side to side

in the deep darkness of the Universe,

swaying in time to and celebrating the siren song

of the cosmos, and be glad,

glad that there is Wonder still, that

in this Internet Age, when life rages so wildly

around us, screaming its banshee cries

from rose-blush dawn to marmalade twilight

just by raising your tired eyes to the heavens

you can bathe and soothe them in beauty.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

 

 

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See, below me – a new landscape neither

wet and wide human eyes

nor robots’ glass and metal minds

have ever seen before.

In all directions sputtering chains

of coffee cup stain stone rings;

endless venn diagrams of thin

and rocky ranges, strange talon-sharp mountains

moulded from donkey-grey, razor-backed rock,

all born in the shockwaves of planet-shattering impacts,

countless asteroids and comets smacking

into Mercury’s pale face

like an angry god’s great fist,

each hit leaving a charcoal-shaded bruise

behind on its aching, sun-baked cheek…

 

This weary world has been assaulted

by the very Sun herself. Time

has tortured it, abused its body

with a hail of screaming stones.

Each crater and pit was once a bubbling

lava bowl, a broiling witches’ cauldron

of meteor-melted magma, malevolently

glowing, growing brighter and brighter

in the cold Mercurian night until brutal sunlight

baked their heaving crusts in place,

replacing swift Hermes’ perfect face

with a pockmarked mask of scars…

 

Now El Capitan cliffed rupes snake around and up

and down those ancient crater walls, their long shadows

crawling and falling over wide and wrinkled floors

that dwarf all glories on Earth’s Moon.

“There can’t be room for any more!” I’m sure you thought

when my first close-ups lit your screens,

but now you see a cosmic pox has has ruined Hermes’ looks;

he took a savage beating after birth.

 

But what of Great Caloris?

“Where is the inner Solar System’s greatest wound?”

I heard some groan as those first images

returned. Expecting jagged, rippled rings,

a cataclysm-carved scar, they saw only

a pale stain, a patch of pearly-white against

the planet’s ashen grey; dappled here and there

with spots and smaller rings of smoky,

dusty hue – new craters within Caloris’

epic bowl, reduced to lonely, lowly spots

of frosted white by the high Sun’s savage light.

In the months and years to come I’ll share with you

a better view, I swear: Great Caloris will be

a gaping gunshot wound in Mercury’s

furrowed forhead, but ‘til then instead

you’ll know it as a mere memory of mayhem,

an unknown wonder on a solar-wind baked stone…

 

And so farewell swift Hermes, I flee

from thee, my first glimpse of your secret

lands already just a memory, lost

a million miles behind me as I fall

towards the Sun. Now, my work here done

I shall embrace the endless dark again,

relishing the brittle taste of space’s icy cold

after these first famous, furnace days.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

Welcome to "CARNIVAL OF SPACE" readers! I hope you've enjoyed this poem, and I hope you'll take a moment to look at my astronomy and spaceflight blog, "Cumbrian Sky"

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Once you all spoke our names with pride;

cried “Godspeed!” as we screamed into the sky

on twin pillars of roaring bright dragonfyre.

You punched bunched fists into the air as

we speared through Florida’s tattered cloud,

the crackling of our engines loud enough

to make you gasp in pain. You watched us

fly and pierce the sky again and again and again…

 

Now you mock us, call us “foolish”,

say we were mistakes that should never

have been made; betray us on your Blogs,

kick us like dogs, turn your backs on

all we have achieved and, with perverse glee,

some even watch half-hoping that we

fail to reach the Dark so they can crow

“See? Another one gone! I told you so!”

 

How soon you forget; how soon you’ll

regret our passing when you see

what takes our place. When Orion finally flies -

that flat-assed capsule on its rocket pencil-thin -

you’ll stop and think “How wrong, how small

it looks.” When Ares eventually reaches out

for the blue you’ll stare into the NewSpace-

conquered sky, remembering how fine we were:

sleek as swans and blizzard white; sunlight

flashing off our wide wings, engines singing

with delight, leaving Earth far, far behind…

 

You’ll fall back on fond memories of com-sats

repaired and spared early orbital graves;

the golden arrays of a good-as-new Hubble,

bathed in sunlight as night turned to day;

seven-hour space-walks by grinning space

voyagers, grappling with struts, nuts and

bolts, their sausage-fat fingers clinging

to spanners and tools, laughing like fools

as Earth turned in silence below, and you’ll know

when you see that first Ares fly

that our lives were triumphs, not mistakes,

and staring into the sky, sighing at those red and white

parachutes flapping and slapping in the wind

you’ll shake your heads sadly and gladly swap the sight

of Orions falling back to Earth with a splash

for that beautiful double-tap crack of Atlantis

heading for home…

 

True, our time may be passing, our Age may be through

but you’ll miss us when we are gone.

No more orbital ballet, RCS pirouetting,

no more space-walkers waving “Hi Mom!”

No more look at that! pictures of tiled wings reflecting

Earth’s sapphire blue oceans and skies;

only memories of launches and Welcome Home landings

that brought tears to a weary world’s eyes.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2007

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Two worlds of eye-widening wonder

my cameras have now seen. One green

and blue, poles newly dusted fresh cream white,

the other a rusted, dusty place, its ancient

Time-worn weary face pitted with craters,

one for every star that shines in its frigid, rose-tinged sky.

 

Barsoom loomed before me first;

its ochre-coated globe rolling

past in sullen silence as I flashed by,

spying on its rock-strewn plains

of gold and yawning canyons grand.

Mars’ shifting cinnamon sands shone

lantern-bright in the endless empty night

that has become my life

and through my outstretched solar wings

I caught a fleeting glimpse of proud Olympus,

a cloudy scarf of cirrus wrapped around its lofty peak.

 

Months of dreamless sleep then.

Mars a delicious, distant memory,

leaving me to search the sea of dark

for a single sapphire spark lost in Sol’s

fierce glare. Then there she was –

a sickle blade of blue, a wicked scythe

of living light so bright against the black;

no turning back now, Earth’s crescent

suddenly huge before me with the lights

of her sleeping towns and cities glittering

on her lovely face, sequins glinting

on an ebony cloak as I raced past,

faster than the meteors that dashed

themselves against her warming atmosphere

as I speared on my way, saying goodbye

to the blue skies of Earth and, closing my tired eyes,

fell into that deep sleep again…

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2007

 

Thanks to the European Space Agency for using this poem on their fantastic Rosetta Earth fly-by Blog!

 

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