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Grey Turned White

 

Kendal stands on an ice cap now.

As we stagger, slip and slide,

Shielding watering eyes from the blinding-

Bright Sun with gloved hands

The frozen land beneath us creaks and cracks like bone,

As if we’re walking across ribcages;

As if we’re all weary Shackletons, dragging sleds

Towards the pole; as if Narnia’s Snow Queen

Cursed our Auld Grey Town for daring to

Challenge her latest decree.

For those of us who have to work, who need

To creep out of our homes at dawn to earn

The tithes and taxes we pay the Powers That Be

To leave our drives and paths untouched by grit

Or salt, the novelty has now gone, replaced

By a primal fear of falling, of shattering a wrist

Or wrenching a twisted knee. But Three weeks

After the first fat flakes fluttered silently

From the sky the children are still wide-eyed

With wonder, wandering around with smiles

Wider than the Kent, hell-bent on finding

The deepest dumps of untouched snow.

Wellies crumping through the icy crust,

Blindly trusting in their youth to keep them safe,

This is a glorious Wonderland, where snowmen stand

In every garden and White is always Right.

© Stuart Atkinson 2010

SEARCHLIGHTS

Behold! The Great Geysers of Enceladus!

I was sure I would be eighty years old

Before I saw them: an old man, thankful that

I could still see anything, let alone the universe’s

Wonders, on my screen, or whatever fantastic machine

Displays pictures in the fading light years of my Old Age.

Yet there they are, bright searchlights beaming

Into an ink-black sky, sweeping for spacecraft

Creeping and sneaking past in the dark;

And there – an almost auroral curtain

Of creamy light, like a veil of fine lace draping

From an invisible rail… How beautiful,

How impossible; space art come to life, a sight

Never seen by human eyes before – plumes

Of silvery mist spewing who-knows-what into

The void, as they have for aeons…

No sleek and streamlined Enterprise flew through

This Narnian scene of alien snow and frost;

But a fragile metal moth, sent fluttering from

Distant Earth to fly swiftly past and glance down

At the shattered ground rushing silently past below;

At the axe wounds hewn from the icy moon’s

Crust; at the landing lights line of bright blooms

Leading the eye from the crumpled horizon…

© Stuart Atkinson 2009

2K

 

 

 

 

 

This morning, yawning as I woke

From another Troy-trapped night

I watched Sol rise for the 2000^th time

And wondered: “Was it all a dream?”

Did I really climb the scree-streaked

Side of Husband Hill? Did one night I thrill

To the sight of shooting stars and two

Silvery moons fleeing across the sky? Did I

Drag my ruined wheel for mile after endless mile,

Ploughing a ragged furrow through Barsoom’s

Cinnamon-dusted crust before Doom

Caught up with me and left me stranded

Here, impatient in this pit of ancient sand?

 

When I arrived, falling out of the salmon-

Hued sky, trailing a flapping banner of flame

And fury, a backshelled-Beowulf, none on Earth

Thought I would survive even a hundred nights -

Yet, here I am, alive, after two thousand!

True, I cannot move, and my horizon has

Not changed for what seems like an eternity

But I can still see, and there is beauty in every

Rock, and stone, sliver, slice and shelf of shale

Around me. And if I am fated to stand

At this wind-whipped, stony place, statue-

Still, until only ghostly traces of my graceless

Lines remain then so be it; I will not rage

Against the end of my days, I have seen

More wonders than I dared dream I would,

And I have always known that every turn

Of my wheels was carrying me closer to

The End.

 

They will send others after me –

Bigger, bolder, more capable machines –

But I will always be The First,

The one that faced and overcame the worst

That Mars could do and made the old

World New again for millions watching

Back on Earth. That was my worth – the rebirth

Of the Red Planet in the minds of restless men.

I’ll be forgotten, that is the way of things, but when,

One day, I’m found, and the so-long silent hills

Of Gusev ring to the sound of celebratory “She’s here!”

Cheers, they’ll speak my name again..!

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2009 

Thanks to AstroO for the beautiful logo – designed for UMSF – at the top of this page. AstroO has also made a poster of this poem, featuring a breathtaking image from Spirit. You can find it on his blog, here: http://astro0.wordpress.com/mer-sol-2000

MEMORIES OF APOLLO..?

 

Did I see it? I really don’t know. I hope so.

I have vague memories of lying on the floor, barely awake,

Staring at a flickering screen as Armstrong,

Little more than a kaleidoscopic chaos of white and grey

Made his way down the ladder and stepped onto the Moon,

But are my recollections real?

I was not quite 5 years old when Eagle

Folded her gold foil wings and nested in Tranquility’s dust,

So was I actually in bed, fast asleep,

Unaware that downstairs history was streaming through our TV?

Did I doze and dream through the First Man’s speech?

Did I miss him reaching out to plant that famous flag

In Luna’s unforgiving dirt? Worse, did I snore quietly through

The whole Bold adventure?

 

I asked my mother: “Did I really watch him walk upon the Moon?”

But her memories of that day are cobwebbed, incomplete,

And she can shine no maternal spotlight on the mystery,

Leaving me to wonder if my “memories” are real

Or merely replays of replays shown on TV

In the years that followed Man’s shameful lunar retreat.

Perhaps, then, I didn’t see that One Small Step live?

Perhaps I am merely remembering watching Bean, Schmitt

And Scott happily lolloping happily along, and not Armstrong?

 

I know for a fact I watched later moonwalks live,

Those memories are sharp as fresh-chipped flint and clear as glass.

At school: my chattering class herded en-masse into the Big Hall

To worship before the Big TV… sitting, knees together,

In obedient rows on the cold wooden floor… being told

“This is important, pay attention, one day this will all be History…”

Of course, soon all my classmates’ eyes had drifted from the screen,

Their magpie minds distracted by something else they’d seen,

But my eyes lingered on the grainy scenes; something in me

Did not want to look away, could not be made

To look away, and it was on those long days, I see now,

That my life was shaped.

 

…But still I wonder, did I really fight sleep to see

Armstrong walking on the Moon?

 

Or was it just too soon?

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2009

Lost Moon

How I yearn for an image of Armstrong –

Just one – to prove he was the First Man to stand

On the virgin land of an alien world,

The First Man to unfurl a familiar flag

As he sagged under the weight of Fate

And History, breathing rare and precious air

Brought from the blue and green bauble

Gleaming in the squid ink sky, a quarter million miles away…

 

Instead we have a mere five teasing glimpses of greatness.

This one shows his legs; that one, I think,

His head? A third: the toes of his boot –

The same boot, perhaps, that was the First Boot, the one

That crumped softly down into Luna’s dirt

As he took his famous One Small Step…

 

But none show his face, the First Face to feel

Sol-light beaming down from an alien sky, or

The First Eyes to stare, wide with wonder, at sights

Dreamed of by Man since the dawn of Time…

 

Surely there could – there should – have been one?

A single lonely frame could have been set aside to ensure

Historians of ages yet to come do not condemn us

For being fools? Was one in-focus, worth-a-thousand-words

View too much to ask? Was it too hard a task

For the men who built the Saturn 5, who pierced the azure sky

To order Aldrin to snap just one likeness of Armstrong,

To immortalise him, standing proudly on the Moon,

Gold-hued visor raised, his tired smile saying

To the watching world “We did it!”..?

 

This is the Portrait That Should Have Been;

The picture we should have seen on the covers

Of a million “Collector’s Edition” magazines

In the days after Eagle flew free.

 

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2009

TO SEEK…

 

Find us worlds, little one, real worlds!

Not more bloated bags of garish gas racing

crazily ‘round their stars, barely far enough away

from their seething surfaces to escape

being dragged down into their heart-of-Mordor cores,

but worlds where we could talk and walk

on springy, surf-soaked, sandy shores

and climb great mountains carved from stone…

 

Find us a place Out There where gentle grey rain

would wash our faces as we stood on the edge

of a sullenly surging ocean, feeling soft-scented winds

blowing in from islands oh so far away.

Find us a planet where, slowly crouching down,

we’d find real rocks scattered ‘round our feet,

lying on the dusty ground; a world where cracking

such old stones together would sound like snapping bones…

 

But there is no rush. Gaze at the glittering star clouds

shining silently ‘tween the Swan and the Lyre

as long as you need; we will wait patiently here

on the world below until you Know for sure,

then you can finally set us free, send our

spirits soaring into a sky revealed at last

to have been concealing Other Earths from view

all along – as many of felt, but could not prove…

 

I grew up knowing just one Earth – the one I stood on

when I looked up at The Moon, wondering how

it changed its shape; the one I walked on as I made my way

Reluctantly to school, wishing I could have remained

At home to watch the latest grainy Moonwalk on TV;

The one I gazed down on through my bedroom window,

Blanketed with unicorn white, pillow soft snow

On unbearable, endless Christmas Eves…

But if you succeed, the children of today will need

To find new words to describe the nature of their sky.

Their heavens will contain countless un-named Other Earths,

Each one a blue-green sequin spinning round a distant sun,

Glinting in the dark galactic night like a fisherman’s fragile fly.

 

And on that wondrous day, when weary travellers from Terra gaze

Down upon the surface of the first New Eden to be reached

They’ll whisper your name as they stand upon a golden beach

On the edge of an alien sea, and, staring at a strange,

strange sky, wonder how it must have felt to be alive

in that dark and lonely time when just one Earth was known to Man…

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2009

Thoughts After Five Years

For five long years I’ve walked with you;

Slogged through dunes of corpse-dry dust;

Rushed at a snail’s pace through wastelands of rust-

Red rocks and boulders split in two by Barsoom’s

Frigid air; stared up at skies turned cinnamon

Hues by talcum powder clouds, and all the while the only sound

The gentle purring-whirring of your gears

And the crunching-scrunching of your wheels

Across and through the crusted ground…

 

Together we’ve seen wondrous sights stolen from my dreams:

Earth reduced to a mere pinprick of light,

Lost in a Bierstadt sunset painted lavender and blue;

Ares’ famous pair of jewel-bright moons skating ‘cross

The sky while shy shooting stars dropped

Silently to the sea of shattered stones below;

Dust devils waltzing to the whispered music of the wind

Before fading away, the ghosts of Mars That Was…

 

But you are struggling now, I feel it.

I feel the waves of weariness breaking o’er you

As you steal another precious sol of life just as I

Feel the dead weight of half a decade’s fallen dirt upon you,

But I can only shake my head helplessly as you fight

To stay alive to feed on the warmth of another amber dawn.

If I could I would send a cup of cool Cumbrian rain

To clean your dusty backs; kneel down next

To you to wipe the grime from your travel-tired eyes

And help you see clearly again.

 

You long for the peace of well-earned sleep, I know,

And no-one walking by your side would blame you if you chose

To sigh “Enough, my work is done!” and stopped roving

At the next sunrise. But do not leave us yet;

there are more wonders to behold, and although one cold,

Cruel day your lives will surely end, while a flame

Of life still flickers in your hearts you must press on,

Proof of what Man, when challenged, can do.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2009 

Remembering Columbia

 

Drawn silently across the sky – a laser-straight line

Of fresh-snow white, yet as the diamond-bright star

At its tip skated across the blue, no-one watching

Knew seven souls were being set free,

Fleeing from and climbing through the hail of debris

Trailing through the air as brave Columbia

Tried in vain to keep her fragile charges safe

For just a few miles more…

 

Six years later and here I stand

Staring sadly at the winter sky.

The Pleiades’ seven suns are shining

Like fireflies o’erhead, one for each bed

Left cold and empty on that cruel night

When Columbia broke apart

And broke the hearts of those like me

Who long to touch the stars.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2009

5 Years

 

Our High Bay showroom-clean-just-built polished gleam

faded a thousand sols ago and now, encrusted

with half a decade’s worth of talc-fine martian dirt,

we know each dawn could be our last.

 

Our once-bright eyes are dull now,

Cross-hatched with cat-claw scratches

From the million stinging gritty grains

That flay our tiled skins each day and with

each creaking turn of our weary wheels

We churn through yet more ancient ground,

The whispering of the winds the only sound

As we haul ourselves across another mile.

Tired beyond belief, but still reaching

For that skyline we know our time

Is running out, but while the Sun shines

On our thick-with-fines backs we swear

our roving shall not cease.

 

In Five years’ time, when another, larger

Rover may be wandering o’er Barsoom’s ochre plains

We will – unless some miracle occurs by then –

Lie dead and buried ‘neath drifts of cinnamon dust.

Not rusting – the air here is too dry for that –

But resting, sleeping a contented sleep, dreaming

Of dust devils dancing at daybreak, remembering

Sunsets painted in blue with a jewel-bright Earth high

Above, knowing that on that Evening Star our memories

are kept alive, our images seen on millions of screens

and the pages of books piled mountain high…

Remember our roving now and then and we will never die.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

 

Note: you can find poster versions of this poem to download at Glen Nagle’s excellent blog here