[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

New story up here...

Meridiani Messenger

[Stu]

JOURNEY’S END

Through hushed halls they stalked - it seemed, for hours -
before reaching the place crudely
circled on his map. Padding past cases crammed
with Ratted, rust-hued stones; bone
-pale blades of evaporite; trays of slate-blue berries
by the score; a brain-sized metal meteorite
“Recovered”, said the sign, “from the edge of Endurance itself!”
until, at last, the Old One stood before his Grail.

“Is that it?” sighed the young martian,
face pressed against the glass,
staring past her own reflection
at the machine inside the case.
“It’s so small, it sounded bigger
in your stories, grandpa; you
made me think it was taller
than Tars Tarkas on his thoat!”

The old man simply smiled, and in
the silence of the darkened MER Museum
knelt down beside the sad-eyed girl
and told her: “Look again.
Spirit they christened her, and spirit
she had - more than many men I’ve known;
more than any gathering of gears and wire
had any right to have.”

The girl looked closer, shielding
her Sun-starved eyes from the spotlights’
glare, wondering how the rover’s
bird-frail, brittle body had not just survived
but thrived in Barsoom’s brutal cold;
if even half the Old One’s bedside tales were true
this rambler of rust and dust was more heroic
than Her Chieftain could ever dream to be…

Perhaps it had scaled mountains after all;
driven through dust devils’ dervish dances
to gaze down upon Great Gusev’s plain
and see Old Earth set with the Sun.
Maybe this fragile thing of rock-worn wheels
and dust-scratched glass had climbed boldly
onto Homeplate’s old, humped back and
rested there, reflecting Phobos’ frosty light..?

“I remember,” croaked the Old One, “how
we sat at our computers, click-a-clicking
through the night, watching picture after picture
come to life upon our screens;
We walked with her, every bone-dry weary mile;
when she went lame, dragging her leaden wheel behind
we would have picked her off the salt-choked ground
and carried her if we could - ”

But the girl could not hear; lured away
by more interesting, more glittery things in
other rooms she’d skipped on, leaving
him alone to gaze through the glass with Nav- and
Pan-cam memories clutching at his heart;
how he’d cheered on Landing Day, clapped
as someone screamed “She’s bouncing!”;
wept when he read the long-dreaded “She’s dead”…

You should not be seen here caged so cruelly,
thought the Old One, frail fingers
brushing ‘gainst her glass imprisoning walls;
She should have seen you as I imagined you:
staring at the sunset, stood tall
beneath titanic titian skies;
dust skipping o’er and filling the tracks
of your wheels, the wind whispering your name -

“Oh come quick!” sang a sudden voice, high
and Sun-bright from a gallery off to one side.
“It’s the Beagle, you know, the one that got lost!”
The Old One groaned, stood up and sighed
Forgive her, she’s young, one day she’ll understand
what you meant to those watching on Earth.
Then, blinking back tears, walked away from his lost love.
Remembering.

© Stuart Atkinson 2006

[Stu]

Self-explanatory really...


STEVE’S FAREWELL

We are alone now, you and I.
The others, in their bunny suits,
burning blue flames against the tall, ice-white
walls have all gone, home to loved ones,
lost ones, beds and bedtime stories
and, eventually, perhaps, dreams...
I could not sleep, not tonight, for sleep
would mean leaving you here alone
in this cold and lonely place
before exiling you from Earth forever –
unless, in some far future kindly colonists
dust you off, crate you up and send you
home again to us.
To me…

I watched you and your sister grow, from seeds
small as a thought to the things
of beauty you are now – tall and proud,
shining in this harsh, halogen-light,
waiting to be wrapped and packed, despatched
with all of Man’s inquisitive rage
to the Other World, that globe of stones
and bone dry fines which might,
when weary Earth has been bled dry,
one day become our Home.
Yet now, mere hours before you take
your leave of your proud parents, cocooned
inside your cushioned shroud,
some part of me screams “Stay!”

For there is danger there, my little traveller.
Others sent before you have been slain:
after leaving Earth to cheers and fanfare loud,
travelling through the void in innocent sleep
some smeared into glowing, ghastly trails,
brains dashed against Ares’ barely-there air;
others smashed to clouds of tinkling, twinkling
pieces, shattered metal, glass and dreams;
a few - swallowed whole like Jonah by Barsoom’s
cruel valleys, snow and seas of dust -
may wait there yet, wondering why
their plaintive cries have not been heard,
why no-one answered when they chirped
“I have arrived! What now..?”

Beware Gusev’s Darcy-dapper dust devils,
who will bow down before and flatter you with
cool requests to take their arm and dance.
Refuse them and their seductive songs, and live.

I envy you,
I fear for you
as I touch you one last time,
reach out with shaking, sterile hands
to feel the coldness of your skin;
wave frightened fingers slowly
past your shining, sightless eyes
that have never seen the Sun
just sun-bright bulbs, buzzing strip-lights,
highlights reflecting off flickering screens
and visors protecting the eyes
of we who dared imagine you,
then drew then built you, here,
in this day-less, night-less tomb.

Tomb? No, more a womb
for you are not yet born;
you will not breathe or move
or see or touch until this world
has curled halfway around the Sun
and you are on another.
But now, here, in these silent shadows
you are safe. The air, you breathe, scrubbed
& filtered clean is purer than angel breath, than love;
Here we have protected you, watched over you,
shielded you from the heat and horrors
of the world you soon will leave and,
looking back, will struggle to find
twinkling in Mars’ indigo dusk sky.

None of Earth’s warm, worm-mulched dirt
has ever touched your wheels yet you will steal
soon across cloying clays Ages old when Earth was young.
Our sky, its puffball clouds and sunsets gold
will all be alien to you, sights you have never seen.
A blessing, perhaps: no memories of rain
-dripping trees or falling leaves will taunt
or haunt you as you rove that dust-choked world.
You cannot keen for Earth’s cool streams
if their clear waters have never eased your thirst.
Yet… strange, so strange, to think the first
time you feel Sol’s rays touch your face
they will have passed and warmed
my world before reaching yours…

I love you, yet hate you for the sights
and scenes that will greet your wide eyes
as you emerge, blinking, from your soft cocoon,
stretching out your wings.
Your first solbreak will be grapefruit pink;
your first noon sky warm honey, smeared
with swirls and whorls of silvered cloud.
In all directions, rocks, each one a treasured page
ripped out in rage from Mars’ autobiography,
scattered by its feeble winds to land in
or block your path or lodge inside your wheels.
Two moons will race and chase
each other ‘cross the sky, dull grey, cratered skulls
grinning at you, laughing as you struggle on your way.

So, farewell. I will watch you –
the world will watch you - as you trek across
the ancient crater’s floor, dwarfed both by
the sky and expectations of your kin.

I am already proud of you.

© Stuart Atkinson 2006

[hendric]

Brings a tear to the eye, it does. Thanks Stu.

[ljk4-1]

About a star so often used by deep space probes to find their way...

Canopus

by Bert Leston Taylor

WHEN quacks with pills political would dope us,
When politics absorbs the livelong day,
I like to think about that star Canopus,
So far, so far away.

Greatest of visioned suns, they say who list 'em;
To weigh it science almost must despair.
Its shell would hold our whole dinged solar system,
Nor even know 'twas there.

When temporary chairmen utter speeches,
And frenzied henchmen howl their battle hymns,
My thoughts float out across the cosmic reaches
To where Canopus swims.

When men are calling names and making faces,
And all the world's ajangle and ajar,
I meditate on interstellar spaces
And smoke a mild seegar.

For after one has had about a week of
The argument of friends as well as foes,
A star that has no parallax to speak of
Conduces to repose.

http://poetry.poetryx.com/poets/127/

[Stu]

Just a quick note to invite you all to visit the new home of my MER/astronomy poems...

The'Verse

[chris]

Just a quick note to invite you all to visit the new home of my MER/astronomy poems...

The'Verse

Love the new one Stu. Great stuff, as always.

Chris

[dvandorn]

I enjoyed seeing your work in the latest edition of The Planetary Society's journal, Stu! Good work!

-the other Doug

[Stu]

Dedicated (not before time!) to all the people who so generously share their time and images with the rest of us... only had room to name a few, but thanks to ALL of you. You know who you are.

QUILTS

Settlers of old told
the stories of their lives on quilts
of rag and cloth. Hunched in cold cabins,
weathered faces lit by shafts
of sepia sunlight lancing down through
mossy roofs they sewed for hours,
recording births, deaths and dances
with needles flashing,
each flower-bordered square a
cross-stitch snapshot of their lives.

Quilts as living things: children
for the childless, great lace-cornered canvases
that grew and grew, stretching out
across Big Tables just as towns themselves
spread out across the plain,
relentless as an oil spill,
a tsunami of settlement that only
running out of continent could stall…

A century passes.
Time and Wright flies.
Apollo reaches out to touch the Moon,
Shuttle engines boom. They soar,
fall and soar again.
Metal butterflies flutter from
Earth to fly past or settle on
her sister worlds.
One - red as wine when seen
shining in the winter sky –
beckons to us louder every year
until -

Today’s frontier – that red light
gleaming in our clear night sky –
is immortalised on quilts as fine
as any sewn by Civil War
widows or snowed-in pioneers.
Some things have changed:
no more dusty rooms, candle-lit,
crammed full of folded fabric;
no more needles sharp or tables
worn and wide.
Today’s quilt-makers’ works
of art are brought to life on PC screens
that flicker green and blue in darkened rooms
and studies all across the world;
Photoshop their flashing needle;
their patches Pancam images, downloaded
overnight by Midnight Browsers
from JPL and NASA sites; their stitches
tiny pixels that make motes of dust
seem big as stones.

With surgeons’ steady hands
they suture ragged edged red Raw
rover images into beautiful mosaics;
Monet-misty landscapes
of undulating dunes soon appear
mysteriously out of what once was
mere grainy noise; shadow-casting outcrops
whisper into view whenever new
Pan- Haz- and Navcam images
bless Exploratorium’s main page.

Horton, Dilo, Nirgal, Nix… six
dozen others too, all consumed
with the need to show and see
Red Mars in new and wondrous ways
– as we would see it if we stood upon
its cinnamon-dusted surface and,
breath catching in our throats,
watch Earth set behind far purple hills
and twin moons dash across the sky…

A century passes.
Men and women bound across the Moon’s
ashen fields, reach out and feel
the Eagle’s fragile skin crinkle
beneath their touch .
Others scurry ant-like over spinning-top
tumbling asteroids: prospectors
staking claims to let them live
like kings back home…

Explorers first, then settlers stalk
the ochre plains of Mars, walk
to and then embrace the two dead rovers
many thought could never die.

And in museums from Chryse to Utopia
martians stare in wonder
at the images the Image Mages
mosaiced together back on Earth,
digital quilts stitched by lovesick souls
before they were even born…
© Stuart Atkinson 2006

[jamescanvin]

Fantastic as always Stu, thanks

[ngunn]

Breaking Views

Humanity has grown new eyes.
They rear on trunks of learning
Steered by sinews of expertise.
They strain into every unknown place
Bearing vicarious habitation,
remote belonging, making the Universe home.

Now this one bright eye stares
On a sudden void, a shock of vanished ground
Under an ochre sky. And through this eye
We millions perceive and wonder,
Sensing and making sense, seeking
All of history in this fine day's vision.

[sranderson]

Hi folks. I have posted a few times, mostly in the Opportunity section. I actually was involved in MER, responsible for the Remote Engineering Unit modules (one on each lander and one on each cruise stage), as well as being systems engineer for the power and pyro driver modules. I managed the REU efforts and worked with two other design engineers and production staff to get the modules designed, built, and tested. I did my own inspection of each board prior to first power-on and again prior to shipment. I'll always remember holding those boards, knowing that they were going to Mars.

I also write a little. Here is something you may enjoy.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

We have come very late.

The smell of age blows across the cracked biscuits of the old seabed,
pushing up burnt-brown echos of lost waves.

The dunes would be sand on another world -- a younger world.
But here, the deep ages have ground the sand to dust,
And the dust has passed to finest powder.

It is just as well.
The wind, thin and cold,
has lost any strength for sand.
Powder alone can it streak and softly pile.

And nothing else has moved forever.

Yes, we are much too late.
The seas waited for us, drying, refilling, and drying many times.
Waited past life, past death, to frozen dry bone dust,
The shrunken sun passing eternally, numbingly, above.

In dim memory, things may have gloried and battled
in these shallow seas; in that warm milky green water.

Were there eyes to watch that scene?
Could there have been thought,
Or even understanding?

And did they ever dream the possibility
Of this dead time,
so far down time's arrow,
so far from life?

All is gone now,
Or perhaps held fast in substrata and darkness.
But I fear that those ancient eyes have become part of the dust-that-blows.

A meteor streaks, falls, and oddly,
Bounces.
A completely new thing.

We see through its eyes:
The dune sea,
the biscuit bed,
hints of water and salt,
Holes blasted deep by the bombardments of antiquity.

In these craters, we seek the old echos
as we wander and dig and grind.

We are disturbing this dead world.
We plan to disturb it further.
Even life, which left long ago,
May yet return.

Or we may squander this last opportunity.
The dust fills our tracks as our spirit wavers.
On Mars, a bet on entropy to win
Is always a sure thing.

Age after age, that soft-blown powder
will dig and scour,
wearing our machines down,
carelessly scattering their atoms
in thin new layers across the seabeds.

Mars understands this well.

It has all the time in the world.

[Stu]

I also write a little. Here is something you may enjoy.

Enjoyed it VERY much, thanks for posting that. Hope you'll write and post some more!

[um3k]

I was rather bored, so I wrote a couple of rather silly "poems:"

See the Mars Rover called Spirit
Travel so slow cannot bear it
Got itself stuck on a hill
Help it I hope someone will

-+|+-

Opportunity called for a rover
Opportunity that rover is called
Opportunity roved to a crater
Opportunity next to crater is small

--

Obviously I'm not much of a poet, but it passed the time.