… to my poetry website! Just click on one of the tabs above to read my astro-poems about Mars, the Mars rovers, and more.
If you’re more interested in the universe and the beauty of the night sky, this page “Out There” is a good place to start…
Thanks for visiting!
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
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
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
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
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
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
