Every Red
For anyone who’s interested, here’s the full text of the poem I read on the last night of the Clarion workshop. It’s called “Every Red,” and it’s about missing:
they drove you off in setting sun
but, heart and helmet, echoes held
your joke that Mistress Mars had won
‘til noisy hand of God dispelled
on thunder’s back and flame of fuel I sped
to flee from Sol’s corona, every red
we grok displays, assured of arc
as you below abide our climb
a speeding slug hears whisperspark
a planet’s hope in near-realtime
the heroes’ path electric vector true
home shrinking bauble whorling every blue
but distance vast mutes racing rays
when aggregating hours of night
to trickling weeks of darkened days
sun’s every yellow only white
same faces drift with time enough to think
too much, this flaccid sack of every pink
that if I float out, cold and free
and reach for Her, instead of you
and bleed through paper skin of me
instead of rust, my blood run blue
and soon, through icy death I have you back
two nano-motes lie mute in every black
my choice to stare at jeweled abyss
(why sleep when dreams bring such as this?)
or sweat in place for love of limb
or tend to thinking plastic’s whim
but nevermore dare shots in which you preen
your smiling stare, your eyes of every green
a Marsman can’t forget to trust
that, likely, Mistress deigns to send
me back with gifts of umber dust
and prayers my wife will comprehend
For now I’ll beg you, love, within my head
a mem’ry borne by blood of every red
