Published to commemorate the conjunction of Mars and Mercury on 14 March (the month named after Mars).
I walk the red dust with my boots worn thin,
Beneath a sun too pale to warm my skin.
Strange colours drift across a sky unknown,
Yet something steady guides me as I roam.
A soft rainbow shimmers where the dust winds rise,
A brief arc drifting through the Martian skies.
Another rests stitched plainly on my sleeve:
The rainbow flag, a quiet truth I believe.
My crew comes from many places and with many tongues,
Shaped by histories older than their nations or guns.
Different paths converged to bring us all here,
To build a future shaped by hope, and not fear.
For much of history, space was one nation’s claim,
A proving ground for rivalry, power, and fame.
Its triumphs were real, but its purposes were small,
A narrow vision that could not fairly serve us all.
This mission is different: born of our shared need,
A global effort where cooperation takes the lead.
No single banner rises above any of the rest;
We stand together, and together give our best.
We walk by laws that transcend all old borders or divide,
Newton’s groundbreaking insights are steady at our side.
A mind once guarded, with some truths he never voiced,
His life reminds us that our future is our choice.
These plains recall the many homes we knew:
Africa’s first footsteps pressing into the new;
The Outback’s vast honesty, sun-scorched and red and bare,
Where endurance is learned and courage grows there.
Here too, we adapt, we endure, we belong,
Sometimes in silence, sometimes in song.
A chorus of humans beneath a pale sun,
Writing a chapter no one else has begun.
History may note the risks we choose to take,
The frozen ground, and the choices we must make.
But more than footprints pressed in rust-red clay,
It is solidarity that lights our way.
And if our steps fade in the shifting dust,
What remains is the simple, unbroken trust
That humanity moves forward when we walk as one,
Even here on Mars, beneath a distant sun.
This blog ©2026 Geoff Allshorn, with some editorial and artistic assistance from Deep AI and CoPilot AI. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.