Adventures on Other Planets

Climbing Mount Olympus on Mars,
Freezing in carbon dioxide wind,
I look out over the Tharsis Dome,
Across the tops of gargantuan volcanoes,
While Phobos speeds across carmine sky
And dust storms scorch the plains.
Traversing Venus, Earth’s infernal twin,
Under brimstone clouds, I fight through
Thick mephitis, as the devious crust
Shifts over roiling furnace fires below,
Across volcanic clines, faults and ridges,
In Ishtar’s spiderworld, with twisted eyes.
I stumble around grave Mercury’s craters,
Under endless giant cliffs, staring into
Perpetual black skies, dragged ever down
Under the weird horizon, watching atoms
Sputter off the surface, driven by solar wind,
Cosmic rays and micrometeorites.
Descending through Jupiter’s thunderheads,
Lightning-struck, stifled with poisons,
I plunge into hydrogen twilight ocean,
Whirled in maelstrom firestorms,
Ice-crystal-bright, endlessly mutating,
Drowned in the voracious maw.
Through Saturn’s icy rings reflecting,
I hurtle, deep winter’s snowman sacrifice,
Past icebergs and snowballs in flight,
Into the dream-blizzard, dancing the dazzle,
As deep harmonics resonate in space,
Maintaining delicate mass in place.
Uranus’s waters call me to set sail
On ghost-blue voyages to invisible shores,
My compass whirled by its queer core,
Through extreme seasons, rotating
Backwards among millions of moons,
Giddy with fatal elixir.