by Mary K O'Melveny
Perseverance
has landed today
on Mars.
Curiosity will have company.
Everyone is eager for news:
Red cinnamon rocks.
Long dead grey lakes.
Dust filled grooves.
Caves chiseled into canyons
like a Henry Moore garden.
Layers of mystery
embedded in swirls of rock
marbled as a fine steak.
We are always looking
for something
to make sense of.
Something that explains
our odd and quirky selves,
the reasons we love and lose,
fight over nothing sensible,
torture and torment.
We are always looking
for history,
for memory,
for stories,
for permanence,
for renewal.
The deeper we dig,
the less happy we are.
So we fly off
to other realms
hoping to learn more
from long dead planets.
Hoping there is something
new under the sun.
Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.
