by Monim Wains

Hello, dear traveller!
I come in peace, rest assured,
Can you hear me? Can you see me?
I have a message for you onboard…

We know what it looks like,
All the division and despair,
Our humble blue marble
in a climate of disrepair.

Our streets are hauntingly quiet,
A pandemic is left unbound,
All the questions have no answers;
There is indecision all around.

And I know that we are split
into ideology, creed and nation,
But there is heart in our core,
A united imagination.

All those who are called human,
They sleep dreaming of the stars,
Having found a dusty red wanderer,
A planet we call Mars.

Our ambition is so insane
we saw our destination in the sky,
Let us unite, we said together,
Towards dawn, we shall fly!

On a rocket ship aflame
we have pierced into space,
To look back at our little marble,
Tears of compassion on our face.

Those petty little squabbles,
So far and so small,
Pretending to divide
our homely blue ball.

All of that falls away,
Once we give ourselves perspective,
The human condition that we share,
Our experience, our introspective,

So let our values be grander,
Based on everything we share,
Opportunity, Curiosity, and now, Perseverance,
Those are the names these Martian rovers bear.