Nine Poem by Conor Dowd

Mercury,
the child who never strays too far from home,
is less alone than others in the sky,
its little orbit eagerly obeyed
as it hugs the solar rim and stays
where time contols the motions of its core
and shields it from the vacancy of space.

Venus,
red and beautiful,
won't look into the mirror of its sun,
inflamed with cosmic passion
and begun along a path
it runs impressed by the mere existence
that its luxury has won.

Earth,
a terra firma terrified by loneliness
where the emptiness of billions congregate
on green and blue
and prove themselves condemned:
destroyed by flood and fire they emigrate to space
and look for answers in its waste.

Mars
is martial and morose,
inclined to war and opposition,
inclined to jealousy, division,
and impassive to the lives of others:
the planets keep their distance.

Jupiter,
a comet now and then disturbs the silence of its sleep
as it creeps along a compass-path to Earth
and the sentence that it passes
is final and complete.

Saturn,
ringed around with rock,
can tilt about its axis according to its moods
but never finds a face it likes to keep
and so is always almost deep
and indecisive.

Uranus,
the moody emperor of anything it seeks to claim,
its moons will circumnavigate around
the chain of gravity
that compliments its frame.

Neptune,
blank and blue,
its ocean-coloured continents collide around the blackened rims of space,
its face is one of calm content
and authorized command
while the hand of Fate is never very far away.

Pluto hides from light
and is a nomad at the edge of sight,
forgotten by itself,
the outlaw of the night
as it skulks along the fringes of our space
patrolling where its orbit leaves no trace.