Just a Tell-Tale Sign - Jan 26 2025

 

Just A Tell-Tale Sign

Jan 26 2025

They want to go to Mars,

the Red Planet

the god of war.

On to Mars

because it’s there.

On to Mars

because they want to be first

to set foot on the Martian regolith

and unfurl their flag.

Like the first footprint of man

on the moon’s pulverized soil.

Like Old Glory

planted there triumphantly

all those years ago.

But which by now hangs limply

and has lost its stars and stripes,

battered by sunlight

the solar wind

the passage of time.

The moon,

where we soon lost interest

once victory was ours.

And on to Mars

because there’s a chance that life once flourished there.

So we can reassure ourselves

we’re not alone in the universe.

That life

was not an accident

here on planet Earth

  —  so fantastically unlikely

it could happen only once  —

but arose elsewhere in the cosmos,

perhaps

is commonplace.

Might even be inevitable,

given the alchemy of stars

and what we know

of physical law.

Yet what an irony

that in our search for life

  — or even just a tell-tale sign

that on our sister planet

it may have once existed  —

when we treat life so contemptibly

down here on Earth.

Even starry-eyed dreams

of colonizing Mars.

But who would want to huddle underground

in that lifeless place

when we live in paradise already?

(Or at least, a paradise for now.)

If not the Garden of Eden

or Eden after the fall,

then this fragile blue and green planet

circling alone

in the blackness of space.

Or grimmer dreams

of Mars as escape pod;

fleeing earth

and setting out for the stars

when our one and only home

becomes unlivable.

When we will have left behind

  —  should any explorer

from who-knows-where come after  —

just a tell-tale sign

that life once flourished here.

This podcast — featuring the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson — kick-started this poem.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/92ny-talks/id905112228?i=1000685366793

He, too, is not fan of manned space exploration. Not just that his main area of interest isn’t planetary astronomy, or that the cost doesn’t justify the benefit, or that robots would be better, but also because the return to the moon and the race to Mars are more about geopolitical competition than science.

Instead of dreams of Mars, wouldn’t it be better to invest all the resources, wealth, and brain power of such an adventure into living better down here on earth? I’d much rather see us get things in order here than turn our eyes to the stars. Plenty of time for that. But later. Because right now, time is quickly running out.