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
Astropoetry 