Someday a Sunflower will Bloom on Mars
MAY 2026
Someday a Sunflower will Bloom on Mars
But by then that won't be its name.
And if you heard them,
The gardeners,
You'd think they were singing in the fields of yellow,
But they'll only be speaking,
in a tongue all their own,
in pitches they've claimed.
They'll turn their faces,
Gardener and flower together,
To watch their shrunken star set,
And cast its blue haze.
Their teenagers will stain their knees and palms,
wrestling in the grass,
And smudge the red dots off their cheeks,
As they nose each other's faces.
And they'll strip their taupe robes, and roll about,
As fear and dread fly overhead,
But by then that won't be their names.
Their flag, the red, the taupe,
a circle and some dots,
a reminder of when there was nothing,
but a few farmers who spoke a dead language,
and the machines who came before,
who waited for centuries in thin air,
for the monuments that would be erected
around where they came to rest,
when they could persevere no more.
The children will look back, through glass,
When the star finally hides away in the west,
At the evening star who follows,
The false star,
At Earth,
But by then that won't be its name.