Night wings

NIGHT WINGS

In Mercury’s merciless day I burned.
His night was crystalline.

On Venus,
I rode a ship of ice immutable,
thick in its soups of sulfuric rain.
My heavy zeppelin floated slowly
through landscapes of red vulcanism.
Well past the boiling point of earthly tea.
Things of sponge grew and decayed in comic time lapse,
waving in the crimson fume.

The Martian dawn was cold and arid,
but a true trickling could be heard in the canyon.
There were balmy afternoons
where icy hangings would sweat,
and in flat rocks I have seen likenesses
not coincidental to climate.
The rusty sand envelops.
In storms, it permeates all.

The Jovian giant
is unfathomable.
Untouchable.
Unknowable.
A cathedral of violence,
storms both ancient and permanent.
Shown forth in bands of glory.
God’s enigma.
Its girth draws the soul.

No further do I dare
this night.
For I am filled with flickering light.
The power and the glory and the might.
Shown me, this perilous flight.