(A poem I wrote in 1993. It was rejected for publication, and sat in a box for the next 19 years.)
Navigation
The ocean is a boiling vat of steel,
And overhead the sky pours forth its wrath.
No radiation storm in charted space
Hath fury like the homeworld's primal seas.
My vessel sped from the icy rings of Saturn and my home among them, leaving Titan station and hurtling sunward. Past the treacherous eddies of Jupiter and the shoals of the asteroid belt I piloted her toward a distant home I had never known.
The waves are crashing on the forward desk
While wind-whipped rain assaults my naked face.
The pitching boat beneath me groans in pain
From stresses never dreamt of deep in space.
Finally I came to the safety of Earth Harbor, high above the Amazon jungle. Leaving my ship in port, a ferry carried me to land at another kind of harbor.
The raging of the storm has now been spent
As pelting rain and driving seas relax.
The clouds disperse, and silence rules the night
Beneath the visage of the starry sky.
