The Solar System
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The Sun
Flaring furnace of
Helium and hydrogen
Around which we spin.
Mercury
Airless, waterless,
Pock-marked planet - sitting too
Close to the fire.
Venus
Sweltering under
Your thick clouds - four hundred and
Eighty degrees C.
Earth
Our watery place:
Mid way between freezing and
Evaporating.
Mars
Dusty, rusty-red
Planet - with dried-up rivers
And underground ice.
Jupiter
Largest of them all:
Trailing your sixteen moons and
Ring-shaped bands of dust.
Saturn
Really your rings
Are chunks of rock and ice, pulled
In by gravity.
Uranus
You have a metal
Heart wrapped in ice, and a cold
Blue-green atmosphere.
Neptune
Sea-blue but not sea:
A distant orbiting chunk:
Three rings and eight moons.
Pluto
Coldest and smallest
And furthest - out there, alone
With your single moon. |
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