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Through The Plumes

 

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

 

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

Flight over Tiger Ice

 

High above the growling Tiger Stripes

a fragile metal butterfly closes up

its frightened eyes and waits

for the first hissing kiss of vapour on its face.

Beneath its outstretched wings

tide-tugged ice screams out and sings

a song of oceans, deep and hidden,

home to who-knows-what? And little

by little Enceladus grows larger,

Cassini charging onwards, reaching out

with all her senses, her camera lenses

glinting in the ice moon’s frigid light

while here on Earth, awe-struck by the sight

of diamond-dust crystals gushing into space,

we can only sit and wish that we were there…

 

(c) Stuart Atkinson 2008

Beneath the Sky

 

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

Messenger’s Memories

 

See, below me – a new landscape neither

wet and wide human eyes

or 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

You’ll Miss Us

 

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

Fly-past

 

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

 

 

The Messenger Approaches

 

Thirty times or more blue Terra has swung

‘round Sol since Mariner stared down upon

this firefly of a world. From Earth

it is but a sequin “star” – hard to find

behind the fading glow of a marmalade-hued dusk

or a frosted lavender dawn – but now I rush

towards the Sun a crescent Hermes is revealed.

Before me wheels a world of wonder!

A cosmic cannonball covered in rock and dust,

its crispy-thin crust cratered and cracked,

wracked by meandering rupes, the Sun’s cruel

heat beating down on its light-drowned, pseudo-

lunar lands where no man or woman

will ever stand without fear of death by fire and flame…

 

But safe behind my shining shield I steal a glance

at Mercury’s scythe-sharp, sickle blade face.

No trace of detail on that rocky slice just yet;

but soon, soon that seductive slice of silvery light

will turn into a glowing orb, and as it grows

before my eyes I’ll marvel at new sights

and send their pictures back to you, waiting

in front of your flickering screens to see

what Hermes has been hiding all these years.

Have no fear, it will have been worth the wait…

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

Hide and Seek with Holmes

 

I walked to work that day beneath

the burning amber spark of Mars;

shining high behind the marmalade sky

Venus blazed lantern-bright too,

an ice-encrusted diamond firefly

flashing violet as night fled the scene,

and with green and blue hues appearing

along the Kent’s steep banks, dawn

crept silently over the high eastern fields, gently

feeling its way towards the Auld Grey Town.

No sounds, only the singing of the silver sky

and the whumping flap of a heron’s

black-trimmed wings: another day beginning

as I scrunched my way through fallen

golden leaves, crunchy as cornflakes

beneath my frosted boots.

 

Unknown to me, even

as I walked beside the river’s winding

way, far far out in space

a comet was bursting into life,

its feeble, faerie light flaring

brighter by the hour, powerful

forces shaking and breaking its icy

crust, releasing dust and gas to crash

out in a golden lamp-shade shell,

and halfway round the Earth –

in those vast eastern lands where

the sunrise had already warmed

the faces of a billion souls – cold

skywatchers had stared wide-eyed at Perseus’

starry thigh and seen a new “star”

shining there, piercing even the glare

of a will-be-Full-soon Moon.

 

The word spread swiftly west; emails,

phone calls, telegrams and texts

alerting all who love and know the sky

to turn their tired eyes east at sunset

and search for Comet Holmes’ shy glow –

 

-         but for days after that dawn my Cumbrian sky

remained a stubborn, sullen shade of grey

and I feared another “Comet of The Year”

had come and gone without its light

entering my impatient eyes. Four long nights

of sighing followed; staring,

glaring at the heavens hidden behind

a cowl of clotted cloud until finally

the star-flecked firmament appeared,

stars peering through a tattered

rip torn between great plates of grey –

and there she was: an out-of-focus

speck, a fleck of cosmic candy-floss

floating far beyond Mars.

 

“Gotcha,” I smiled, swinging the ‘scope

around. Magnified a quarter of a hundred

times the comet was a cloud; round

as a bleached blood cell, yellow-white,

a jelly fish beached on the bright starry sands

of the Milky Way’s long shore.

“I’ve never seen anything like you before,”

I whispered as the comet’s new light

bathed my upturned face, the grace

and beauty of the universe amazing me

yet again.

 

© Stuart Atkinson 2007