Oileán Ruaidh & Her Sisters
They stand on the dusty plain like the remains of statues,
Gargoyle heads fallen from some martian cathedral’s heights.
Around them: the soul-dwarfing Big Country of Meridiani,
Shai Hulud dunes of cinnamon dust snaking as far
As the eye can see, leading to a lumpy eastern horizon
Where Endeavour’s faraway hills reach up to touch the sky.
Hard to believe this gnarled and ugly nugget
Of elemental iron once sailed silently between worlds,
Tumbling over and over, soaked in starlight,
Bathed in the Milky Way’s glow until one long-ago,
Twin moon night it fell screaming from the sky
To slam into Old Meridiani like Kal El’s capsule into
The Kents’ cornfield. And there it stayed for a millennia
Of millennia; slowly, oh so slowly being carved
By the chisel-sharp winds of Mars into the bizarre
Sculpture we see today: its body covered with
Countless classic regmaglypts, like thumbprints
Pressed into freshly-pummeled dough; in its
Center that axe-hewn cleft, like a propeller wound
Cut deep into a sleeping manatee’s back…
Some can find no beauty in her or her sisters, note nothing of interest
In their twisted, tortured forms, dismiss them as
Nothing more than rubble; they would walk on by, untroubled,
If one dropped from the sky and landed at their feet,
I swear. But those of us with more romance and wonder
In our hearts see them standing on this UV-baked, bedrock
Beach and wish we could reach down and run our hands
Over their fantastic forms, fingers feeling each and every
Shell-sharp, sculpted edge, tracing out the contours of
Their rusted hollows and holes as ice-cold sunlight glints
Brilliantly off their Time-polished metal hides,
Marvelling at where they’ve been and the changes they have seen…
One day – if they are not smuggled back to Earth to hide,
Unseen, in the safe of some collector with credits to burn –
Oileán Ruaidh & her Sisters will sit on spot-lit
Shelves in some Great Museum of Mars, on view
For all to see. But for now, they will stand alone,
Islands of iron in a sea of powdered stone.
© Stuart Atkinson 2010
Well done!
Poster! Poster! Poster! 🙂
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