To Earth, From Mars

Photograph via Flickr by bluedharma
You are the blue sapphire
of the night sky.
I am the rust-colored
dwarf in your shadow.
You want to believe
the mythology of me
as “the bright and burning one”
and not as “the thing of rage”
scarred eons ago by a myriad
of meteors, trapped by darkness.
I’ve told you this before
but you keep searching
my caves for microscopic
evidence of elements
we have in common—
aluminum, iron, magnesium—
clues I can be what you need
me to be: water-rich, able
to sustain your breathing.
Don’t claim my three billion
year old clay rocks as your hope.
See me for what I am now:
a fractured mass of metal
crumbling into red dust.