Going to Mars in grim slow-motion
Building the grandest pavilion there;
Collecting seashells dried up ocean–
The pale, the unrepentant somewhere.
Couplets and haunted sonnets I write
Of petrified nests, of starlight, moons
With scary monikers: Fear and Panic.
Children of chaos: Phobos and Deimos
Calling this pale pink sky to mind
Are banishing birds of any kind–
Whispering over their unknown tomb
Where bones concealed for ages resume
Irregular shapes in the deepest barrow:
Sister nightingale, brother sparrow.
Crossroad Vertigo (Mirror) 
Perfect. Any other description would not do it justice.
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Hello Copeland, glad to see your elegant new home-on-the-web. Wondering if your eloquent poetic wandering to Mars implies weariness with our poor planet, battered as it is by the ill winds of fortune as well as by man-made disasters. Anyway I wish you, and all of us, brighter days and calmer nights and enough love to heal the wounds, wherever they may be.
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Hi Natalie, It’s great you are here! You have given us encouragement for years. Welcome to the new place. Thursday the 18th, NASA’s latest lander, Perseverance, will arrive on Mars and start a mission solely dedicated to finding signs of life out there. Perhaps they will find the fossil record of life they expect to uncover. It means that the fate of a whole planet will be confirmed as one that was once full of life, and is now dead. Scientists are hoping they can say “See, life is not confined to only our beautiful world, it can happen elsewhere”. But looking at the other side of things, more of earth’s species will likely vanish before that Planet in Red sees humans living there. Where will the sparrow forage then?– and who will listen to the nightingale’s singing?
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Hello Copeland, thanks for inviting me here and blessings on your lovely new site.
Yes it’s impressive that NASA is doing well in the competition to colonise Mars and possibly other planets too but, as you say, looking at the other, more urgent side of things, WTF?? Excuse my language but honestly WTF? The multi zillion dollars and other currencies being spent on these jolly space rides could solve most if not all of the suffering happening right now on planet earth, no need to make a list of each and every kind of suffering, it’s all there plain to see. Before I start celebrating space exploits I want to see human intelligence wedded inseparably to compassion and empathy, then applied with the same ambition, skill, ingenuity, backed up by Everest-size mountains of cash, that are lavished on outer space exploration.
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