Lament For Titan
Robin M. Mayhall
I lost my mind to rational thought.
I lost my heart to fundamental truth.
I just gave in to faith in the rightness of the place.
As soon as I saw those first grainy, greyscale images,
I knew I had found home.
The fog-shrouded landscape called to me
From eight hundred twenty million miles away.
From across most of our solar system,
That sullen orange siren was singing me home.
The other colonists used to ask me,
Joking, how I got born on Earth.
I couldn’t explain why a recycled mixture
Was the air my lungs
Were meant to breathe.
I couldn’t explain why our purified water
Tasted like mother’s milk to me.
I know it hurt my parents to see me board
The settlement ship with such evident longing.
Like a black sheep, I strayed far from the herd.
But there were no green pastures on that world
Of methane rivers and acetylene ice. So
Now I’m back. For three long years
I’ve lived once more on the world where I was born.
My family is happy to have me “home” again.
But for almost fourteen years I was home, and home was Titan.
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Robin Mayhall is a public relations professional who writes speculative fiction and poetry in her “spare time.” She lives in Louisiana with four cats, who indulge her hobby with only occasional attempts to sit on the keyboard. Her poems were nominated for the Rhysling Award in 2005 and 2007.
Poem © 2007 Robin M. Mayhall. All other content copyright © 2007 ByrenLee Press
Copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted.
Art Director: Bonnie Brunish
