Electra Movie Camera image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
The Planet’s Tale: Cantos I-V
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
I
On the ridge, the spaceship crashed,
Occupants would soon be ashed,
By the intense, oil-fed fire,
Consuming it, fin to spire.
Out there stumbled, licked in flame,
Suit in tatters, feet half-lame,
Howling with the fear of death,
Insides cooked by heat-seared breath,
A single man, once the boss
Of the crew, killed in the loss
Of the ship, exploding which
Tosses him into a ditch.
II
Is he dead, does he linger?
What has fate’s fickle finger
In this crevice marked for him,
Filled with sulfur to the brim?
As he sinks, in goo dissolved,
Up there bubbles, and revolves,
Whirling with inner fission,
A cube which starts transmission.
Out it broadcasts coded beeps,
From the gulch with bankments steep.
Into the space the message streams,
Last words of the missing team.
III
On a ship, forces muster,
At a place where there clusters
Pristine planets unexplored:
Landmass, sky, and ocean floor
Unopened to man’s ruled plumb,
Though a dozen have succumbed
To dangers new and unguessed
Where odd mountains rise and crest.
But first before they descend,
The captain who would them send
(Troops whose training is relief)
Takes a moment to them brief.
IV
“When we first this sector found,
And through clouds surveyed the ground,
Hidden to us, but through scans,
Some hint we had there were bands
Of rich metal, patches too
Of perplexing residue,
Where some people must have worked,
And in shadow may still lurk,
A remnant of glories past,
Into waste and ruin cast.
So I tell you, do your best:
Find our fallen, and the rest.”
V
Out they jumped, one to a pod,
And thus ungrouped, when the clods
Of earth they struck, would bypass
What the first explorers gassed.
Once arrived, they rendezvous
And the final tape review:
“When you land,” the code reveals,
“Others waiting will you feel,
Ghosts which hover out-of-mind,
Or you follow far behind;
Them ignore, unless you wish
To make death a tasty dish.”