2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #21: Unforced Perspective

Your beauty is

not skin deep

nor shallow.

I could explore

for the length of my life

and every other life and

not come to the end

of your wonders.

And yet.

Perhaps it is having

the distance

that helps me

appreciate 

just how beautiful

you are.

NaPoWriMo Poem #20: Saturation

When younger
it's easier to tell
what happened.
Each impact
hits a new place,
previously whole
and untouched,
the effects separated,
localized and contained.

But damage accumulates
as time
wears
on.

Eventually there is
no place untouched,
and each new event
churns and buries
the evidence of the past,
and creates a thicker mask
putting the original
surface
deeper and further
from sight.

We are left to wonder
if we're missing
something really important.

2016 NaPoWriMo Post #19: Opening the Dome

"I'm afraid of heights"
she said from within
a nitrogen mist
with a shrug,
as machinery hummed
in the background.

"The views
on the way here
are really lovely"
I offered.

She nodded
and opened the dome.
"I've heard that.
But I'm too scared to look down
so I just look up."

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #18: Insistent Moon

The telescope points
watching rocks in the glare of
an insistent Moon

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #17: Sacred and Profane

Will we find
sacred places
on other planets?
Masses to celebrate?
Will we set aside
shrines to
latter-day
Scotts and Pengs?
Will we make
pilgrimages
to dead orbiters,
buried rovers,
ancient wreckage?

And will we understand
if
another culture
decides
to erase famous footprints
to erect a telescope
that really needs to go
in just
that
spot?

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #16: Some Clocks

Unstable atoms
unable to remain parents
decompose
leaving noble children
trapped
in crystalline prisons,
and hoping to be counted
in our laboratories
and set free
to demonstrate
there are some clocks
that can
never be stopped.

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #15: She Dreams of Slurry

she dreams of slurry
thick and frigid,
toxic and alien.
she can picture
the scene
through tubes and screens:
a land where
the sun
never shines.
no pleasure domes,
no time
to explore.
she wishes
she could run 

her hands
through the muck
and dance barefoot
in the oily rain.