Welcome…
December 7, 20082K
August 18, 2009
This morning, yawning as I woke
From another Troy-trapped night
I watched Sol rise for the 2000th 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..?
July 14, 2009Did 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
July 9, 2009How 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…
March 15, 2009Find 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
February 18, 2009For 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
February 1, 2009
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
January 1, 2009
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
Through The Plumes
December 7, 2008
What strange, warm-water wonderland will lie beneath me
as I fly high overhead?
Below me, rushing past – a snow-globe scene,
a fractured, cratered wintry plain of gleaming
ice as hard as stone, criss-crossed with groaning
fissures that open and close like the bone-
dry maws of some fearful buried beasts
that feed on vacuum, and scream in pain
each time they feel Great Saturn’s pull…
Peering down upon the gravity-sculpted ground
I’ll feel a million Terran eyes upon me,
wondering what wonders I will see
when I fly into bright sunlight once again:
miles-high plumes of tinkling, twinkling vapour
shining bright against the endless night
of space? Racing through them might my face feel
the gentle touch of Enceladean dust?
Tomorrow I will know, and as snow falls softly
on the moon below I watch it grow and grow and grow…
© Stuart Atkinson 2008
From A Distance
December 7, 2008
Just think…
To the eyes of an alien Voyager,
built on and flung hard away from
an exotic, alien world whirling ‘round
some faraway star, Earth would look like that:
a soft focus blue and white ball,
all its cultures and countries concealed
beneath congealed-cream, candyfloss clouds,
little more than a Christmas tree bauble
bobbing about in an ocean of ink…
Just think…
On one Far Future day, a pale,
proud martian kid will say “THAT’s Earth?
Big deal!” as they gaze grudgingly
into a telescope eyepiece to peer
at Barsoom’s Evening Star…
But they’ll secretly marvel at the view,
wondering if all the blue really is cool,
clear water, as the computers they use at school say…
How strange…
To think that some day people will see
an image as vague and watery as this,
as a telescope aimed at a faraway star
sees a glint in the distant sun’s glare;
a roomful of scientists will stare at its
magnified portrait and whisper “We’ve
found it, an ocean-washed world just like ours,
an Earth circling an alien sun…”
But for today…
See how dark the disc of Luna is
as she skates past Terra’s face?
Against Earth’s hues of white and blue
Selene’s gown is as brown as dirt, as dark
as just-ploughed soil soaked by rain.
So strange to see the brilliant Moon
that has made so many lovers swoon
reduced to a mere muddy sphere…
© Stuart Atkinson 2008

Posted by phoenixpics 
Posted by phoenixpics 
Posted by phoenixpics 

