Here Be Dragons...

Stuart Atkinson sent along a poem he wrote following the New Horizons encounter with Io last year. It is a great poem and he has allowed me to post it here. Stuart has a blog of his own called The 'Verse where he posted numerous poems he's written related to various space events that have occurred over the last year, such as the MESSENGER encounter of Mercury or the dust storm that affected the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity last summer, and is a site definitely worth checking out.

HERE BE DRAGONS...

Through your telescopes I am merely a star, a spark of light that slides and glides ‘round proud Jupiter; one night here, the next night there, sometimes with company, often alone on Jove’s left or right. One of four fluttering fireflies flitting silently through the blush of the Red Spot’s glow. But dare to approach me, to brave Jupiter’s cell-scything rays and you’ll crave the safety of Earth once more, for I am a world where chemistry screams at the sky and tears at your eyes, with claws of colour so sharp and so raw you’ll turn your face away and seek the comfort of Callisto’s cratered smile. For where my colder, older brother and sister moons glow shivering shades of blue and grey, my tortured face is painted hues of fiery red; instead of frigid plains of painfully pastel tones, my bones lie under seeping fields of sores and blistering boils. A pox-infected moon am I, a leprous satellite that brings my smooth-skinned family shame.

Yet, if they knew my secret, the mysteries I keep hidden from their disapproving view, they would feel envy, for the tangerine- and clementine-hued splashes on my face are not mere volcanoes, as your Earthly scientists believe, but are great blooms and plumes of fyre, breathed out by beasts which bathe beneath my Jupiter-racked crust. Maui, Marduk, Loki – dragons all, and with Volund and Pele prowl and crawl thru my sulphurous churning seas; wings outstretched, tails sweeping to and fro below my scabby-encrusted skin, swimming, spinning, gorging on my bitter bile before breaking through to spew their flaming breath out into space in great gushes of furious light. What a sight! And what luck you had, sending one of your nuts and bolts butterflies gliding past me just as mighty Tvashtar roared, vomiting his dragonfyre towards the stars, howling with Masubi and Prometheus in a choir of dragons singing to the Great One’s swirling storms; what fortune to soar through this cloud of worlds on your way to the Belt, and Beyond…

© Stuart Atkinson 2007