a poem in my pocket

Linking this haibun to dVerse Poets pub where Frank Tassone is our host…

Mars, that ready, ruddy, rusty, dusty planet hangs between Earth and Jupiter; named for the Roman god of War. We contemplate his heavenly body in the mighty month of March: muscular, iron clad, and vengeful.  Is not war an erupting march to madness, leaving black death and blood-stained pockmarks in its wake?!

Violent dust storms, extreme seasons, and an atmosphere of carbon dioxide make Mars inhospitable yet aerospace scientists dream of manned flights to the fourth planet. My sons participated in a Mars project where 6th graders designed a biosphere for future immigrants. We once visited an abandoned biosphere in Arizona where personnel’s’ personal relationships were the demise of the mission.

Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy put science fiction on the cultural map, stretching literary minds and stirring curiosity in our celestial, terrestrial neighbor beyond our moon. In Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet, Oyarsa, the ruling power of Malacandra (a.k.a. Mars), declares,

”The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil [God of Malacandra] you would have peace.”

mars’ olympus mons;

civilization’s high peak–

active volcano?

image courtesy of NASA