The Martians

A brilliant red orb shines
through my telescope -- Mars.
Adjustments in altitude, azimuth
and a slow, careful focus
reveal orange deserts frozen in time.
How mistaken our ancestors,
who named these sleeping
valleys, mountains, dunes for Bloodlust.

Home, a world once wet with oceans,
spawning life when Earth was molten.
In my bones, I remember mountains
falling from the Martian sky,
blasting free stones alive with microbes,
seeds surviving frozen vacuum,
the Sun's deadly stare,
plunging hot into Earth's oceans,
stretching protoplasmic limbs,
dividing.

We are the descendants.
We dream of journeying back across the void,
when we shall land in metal craft,
scrape our boots across the fossiled rocks,
sift our gloved fingers through the sand
of home.

Scott Speck
01/16/2000