Perseverance

Kathryn Jones

March 10, 2021

Landing with a sound that no one heard

in Jazero Crater, ancient lake turned to dust, 

planet named for the Roman god of war

because it looked red, like blood spilled 

by slaughtering armies. Myths said Mars 

drove his chariot of fire across the cosmos, 

pulled by horse-moons Phobos and Deimos, 

meaning fear and panic. Yet I see only two orbs,

small like asteroids, rough and irregular,

not fearful at all. I wander among dunes, craters, 

cliffs as Perseverance, a French word drawn

from Latin, perseverare, the root severus, 

meaning severe. I am designed to overcome,

to search for life on this severe planet connected

to Earth by the sun’s rays and Bowie’s question.

I am the seeker, deployed by humans who want to know

if there is life on Mars, if they are alone. They live

with five billion others and still feel alone. It is 

their nature to search, to yearn. I am the chariot 

now on this bloodless planet. The sun sets here 

in blueness with no moonlight.  I search for words

to explain in human terms. Solus. Silence. Solace. 

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.