Mars Reflections Poem by Theresa Haffner

cold criminal element
the undeciphered code of the last armed outpost
to see any of the events down along the causeway
where the dried riverbeds meet
the tiny terraformed areas of the planet mars
domed cities, with the mirror sky reflecting
heat and light back against the greenhouse surface
a glittering latticework of delicate spider webs
but mars is a cold mistress
the black sky
the tiny sun 1/2 the diameter of earth’s sol
a pinpoint above the rocky horizon
there are very deep scars reminding one
that mars was once very much like earth
in a primeval era of warmer latitudes
dream latitudes
for now all was armed resistance
and the pale monoliths
the monuments on mars of another time
primordial immemorial a time before history began
these outposts
a vague dwelling where man hath carved a bleak existence
a frontier a foothold against
the megacold of the martian night
a winter that turned the ice crystals of carbon dioxide
to sheets of permafrost at the polar ice caps
no one sails the frozen canals
no one treads the martian gobi
but for the tiny terraformed areas
and the domed cities
crystals on a necklace of the bejeweled martian night

we did not come to mars because it beckoned
it did not lure us with its mystery
or welcome us after we were here
it had little to offer other than a convenient
rock for us to aim our interplanetary missiles
developing our space drives for the real prize
alpha centauri
four and one half light years away
a double star system promising
worlds of unparalleled beauty
more distant than one life span
and mars the first stepping stone

we came here not expecting
to be unable to return
not because the distance was too great
or the interstellar sea
too inhospitable
but because the political climate
on earth had changed
they call us criminals because we had
to defend ourselves against
a government not our own
that would devour our lives as
well as our freedoms
they say that life on earth originated
as bacteria on mars propelled to earth
by violent meteor strikes
now deimos and our tiny phobic second moon
rise in the west and set in the east
and mars unable to support life of its own
has become our second home.
exiles in a sky of black and cobalt blue
and when we are old will we still be content to
wander the hydroponic gardens of the tiny
terraformed domed cities
unable to return to the swelling globe
of the planet earth looming orange
in the sky over mars
alpha centauri will have to wait
while mankind reconciles his destiny
in the twenty second century A.D.