The Sock Drawer - 3. The Fragmentation of Mars

The Fragmentation Of Mars

I feel like Mars,

Moderate and calm.

While so many stars

Feature heat and storm.

Adrift on my ellipse

In Milky Way I’ve run

My billion-years-long trips

In orbit ‘round the sun.

Now there’s a white-hot star

Approaching me with speed,

Large rock come from afar,

Who’ll smash me when we meet.

And meet we will, because

Like paralysed I’ll stay

On its determined course,

Too slow to move away.

The dusty, icy surface

Of my solid, rocky ground

Is a shield that will not suffice

Against the force I’ve found.

How thin the layer of ice,

Remarkable how weak,

That it should melt from eyes

And crack, and break, and leak.

There’s fluid, yellow ore

Under its rocky sheet.

This molten, mellow core

Is radiating heat.

And I sense through its skin

Its flesh of flowing metal,

This veil of crust is thin

And fights a losing battle.

This asteroid’s resolved,

Already much too close,

My ice has all dissolved,

And I think it knows.

When finally it crashes

Into me with a roar,

Sulfuric flying ashes

Obscure its glowing core.

Ridiculously slowly

I’m crumbling apart.

I’m realising solely

That this is just the start.

Its bowels flow unto me,

Merge with the floating shards.

So it does undo me,

And merges both our parts.

The novae’s countless beams

Illuminate this scene.

Their coloured streaks and streams

Give it a cloudy sheen.

Like nebulae our dust around

Won’t settle and keeps shifting.

No gravity to which it’s bound,

And inside we are drifting.

It seems to drown out other sounds,

There’s only a deep grumble.

The hum and mist, all that surrounds,

Make me grow numb and humble.

Heavily and low it pounds,

A pulse, and with a start

I realise with a few counts

That it’s its beating heart.