Mapping Rain in Chalk

Red, Once Blue

There is no life on Mars,

no massive black silted

pipelines, no spectral vaults

of permeable membranes,

only gardens of molecules

sufficient upon reservoirs

filled with scattered handfuls

of continuity, proclaimed in

harmony, revived by discord,

communion flourished with

contrariety, dense waves of

dissolution accreted to true

halos of the edge. All that

colonized, all that surprised

the slow dominion of this

ancient planet, yielded long

ago, piked to brittle hoarstones

athwart deserts inimicable

to the dry seed of pioneers.

Or rendered into red sap

fossilized within volcanic

mountains imagineered as

venerable dragons, white

and toxic. Clusters of poor

angled bights, burred dull

with formless dust, follow

shorelines bound outwards,

accompanied by feldspar-rich

glass, witnessed by four visitors,

infants in ormolu and ebonized

steel, recently inscribed with

planetary characters, bolted

to shafting designs which twist

and turn in false spines and

flowers and thorny spurges

around a solid core, waiting

for the galaxy’s end.

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