Heartpen: Poems of a Cardiac Quill

Tamsin Saw the Beginning

Sand red as blood coated the windows

of the rocket ship

which settled, jets hissing,

atop a dune curved

in a half bowl toward

the west.

Mars sighed

and its breath was

rusty and cold.

If beaked rabbits or antlered foxes

scurried in the craters here,

the animals made no sound.

Ancient carvings

might scar hidden tombs

a mile beneath the planet's surface.

But Tamsin doubted this

as she stepped out of the ship,

her spacesuit a bulk

of remote controls, electrical cables,

buttons, switches, pouches.

A white ball was her helmet.

It engulfed her whole head,

and through the visor

she watched dust devils

weave the barrens

into whipping spindles.

Gales blew and

the dune

shrank.

Flailing her arms, Tamsin slid down

into its immense deepening bowl

and rode

a wave

of red sand.

The craft she had arrived in now rumbled into autopilot

and floated by her side.

Dense grains pelted her suit.

She cheered into her oxygen tank.

At the wilting dune's base,

she skidded to a halt

and her ship planted itself—

a gleaming aluminum lump—

next to her.

Hours she waited.

Would the event

she'd visited the Red Planet to witness

happen as prophesied?

Yes, yes!

The ground quaked!

She felt the vibrations,

felt them in her ready bones!

Crowning the horizon,

Olympus Mons

the shield volcano

sat twitching and bubbling lava!

Mars belched.

Huge molten geysers shot forth,

and Tamsin admired them from a distance.

They stained the heavens neon yellow,

then plumed,

flowers of smoke growing, rising,

birds flapping out of the billows

and laying eggs midair that hatched

while falling

and released chicks

that took flight as well.

Tamsin grinned,

her stretching cheeks burning kindly

behind her visor

in the sudden heat.

What the elders said

was true!

Life

always began

with an eruption.