Where Water Was

Your reddened skies and barren soils conceal

A frozen mass, but once it was a sea

Infrared telescopes can now reveal

What could and should, but never was to be.

A mighty ocean spanned the northern realms

With winding river delta, and with lake

And whilst deuterium now overwhelms;

The absence of its sibling it can’t slake.

As age set in the pressure it did drop

The atmosphere receding day by day;

A Martian landscape water now did swap

And in the ether slowly slipped away

And so we tune our gadgets for a sign

That leaving was part of a grand design.

But even if we find life there today

How will it stop our planet’s own decay?