Mars - Imagining the Seasons

Spring

Lilliputian
flowers
cling
to outcrops
of volcanic rock,
tiny tufts
confetti dots
mirrored
on the irises,
as heart
conspires
with eye's
meniscus,
exchanging
motes of gladness…
 
Minimal
contingencies,
accepted as
survival's price,
implode in joy
beneath an orange sky.

Longing
to tell someone,
you're silenced
by the rocks and sun.
For this moment
you'd do it
all again,
this gamble
with your life,
so intensely
do you sense 
the spring's
birth pangs
on planet Mars.


Summer

A summer wind, half-sister of the Khamsin,
swirls veils of acrid ochre grit, obscuring
visibility, withering spring's fleeting
harbingers, abrading nerve-ends,
blurring the chemistry of brain
and time, confusing synapses…

Atavistic memories of rain
lay siege to peace of mind -
better to think of Bedouin,
braving the wastes
between oases…

Camels, if they
brought them here,
would fixate on escape…


Autumn

The atmosphere regains its equilibrium
and so do we - the henna shrouds
grown weary of their weird,
hypnotic dance; we have survived
the parching Martian summer
with our wits intact…

Some of us still dream of forests
glorified by foliage - birches
nimbused by autumnal
radiance of dying leaves;
mountainsides of copper beech
we carry in our genes.

Mountainsides are mostly
copper here, with streaks of darker
hues. Autumn is a state of mind.
We must endure.


Winter

The ice-cap deepens to Siberian
propensities. Time out in the Urals
would be heaven by comparison.
Fortuitous indeed, our forebears'
legacy of permafrost -
inherent sense-extremity
terrestrials have largely lost.
 
Emulating European bears
our ancestors revered,
we hibernate, with vernal rhythms
murmuring in dreaming ears,
breaking the deadlock of the dark,
interminable polar night,
our body-clocks attuning
to the tiny spores beneath
the ice, thawing upward
to the joyous surge of photosynthesis,
lobes furled tight in clubs of buds -
hands opening toward the light…