Litany for the Spacefaring: MAVEN

Patron saint of vanished weather and red grief,

you hold watch where Mars gives itself to space.

The sky thins at the edges, atom by atom,

riverbed scars translated into a history of loss.

Still you remain in cold loneliness to write elegies,

listening to the echoes of a heart come undone.

There is love in studying an absence this closely,

in cataloging what is left and what could not stay.

O MAVEN, make us tender to erosion,

to every atmosphere that leaves by degrees.