[our first trip to the pole]

do you want to go outside?
do you want to go for a long ride?
a billion years unknown
it's written on the stone

we drove day and night
across regolith and fines
built a transponder road
i felt like a little stone

purple and black dunes
under sunset's sapphire light

we found the land

past five thousand metres of desolation
past this proximate, alien horizon
sweep me to the crest of towering dunes
take me to this land you love

***

[ceux qui nous manquent]

we are here together
boots on the iron soil
roots are growing down

we think about our old friends
petals in the sun
the glint of eyes in the dark

(beyond)

we want to walk a meadow
hear their cries on the wind
not just build a farm

(vaults of brick)

so choose that greening dream
the colour of living things
let's choose to dream alive

(lie greater wonders yet)

the fabric of the soil
makes a world a home
the sun and the earth collide
the seeds awake inside

comes the blowing green
the colour of living things
their breath keeps us alive
things that live and die

come the greater beasts
some of us will leave the towns
and follow the herds around
living off the land

if you lived your life inside
you don't even know how to breathe
you can't even tell what's wrong
you don't even know what's wrong

beyond a marshalling
a ministry of minerals and machines
to reach back
to cast rhizomatic roots

to protect and touch and greet
preparing painfully and with great struggle
the love that consists in this

from earth the cradle world
so many things we have learned
adorning our new home
with the love of the living things

***

[our varying visions]

i want to sit in humble, reverent study of this land
to fill my lungs with the free air of a living mars
to understand purely
a land to nourish ceaseless play
to fill our desperate needs
a second earth
a second's peace from our species' putting-to-work
to come to know—to come to love—something wholly apart
to live outside a metaphor
the kingdom of heaven on mars

what was
what might have been
what never as yet could be