[ann watches the outbreak at melas chasma]

here again

laid low by the horror
wrought upon what little i love
and esteem
(a life, a mind, history, meaning, place)
that i might feel no more

and i have seen their kind before
zealots of false ideas
slashing, cutting, burning, burying
any expression of that truth unknown
(too clear to constrain in name)
that they might be gods
and claim the mantle they made
"he in whose image is the world"

this crushing torrent, i have felt before

this land, my body, my home
crushed and buried

here again laid low

this land, my body, my home

*

she lay on the floor of the rover
and watched the red world recede
watching the water turn to ice
watching the red world turn grey, and white, and brown
the fines laced into the edges of the frozen waves

she lay on the floor of the rover
and watched the red world retreat
rock and stone and regolith buried
those things hard and solid and real swept away
sometimes when change comes it comes fast

she lay on the floor of the rover
and watched the red world run
watching the canyon become canal, become frozen
'they won't ever know the land i know...'

*

you imagined a mars, centuries ago
sharpened the far-off images with human stories

and i love this land for the stories it has to tell
not as a canvas for a dream hideous and unfitting

mars cries out
four billion years of rock and fire and force
man tells man of canals
and mars drowns in the mythos

men shall destroy this land
for it tells a story not their own

*

i am still here.
this is still mars.

my body
come back to me.

i shall rise
and continue the fight again
once more
forever

*

hold that wheel and hold it fast

they want us dead
they want this red world dead and gone