Field Notes : Helmet
--at the Mars Desert Research Station, Crew 141, southern Utah
Hum of the pack.
Tubes that have their purchase
on the helmet's clear globe,
scratched surface of that world,
view and obstacle, as though
sight is what we need alone
to face the variegations of
this terrain and the next.
Wind on the skin, just
slits of vents. Ingenious,
a kind of sadness.
We call it protection.
In walking our arroyo, a wish.
The habitation's transit.
Our capitulation.
Years before, along the rim
of a crater, along tubes
of lava, stratigraphies
charted by King and Gilbert,
they practiced with scoops
the proper motions
to sample lunar soil.
They drove ungainly rigs
in suits so firm
to move a finger
was exhausting.
For awhile it's enough
to see through plexi.
Then the hand lifts
to skin and remembers
it's a glove, it's glass.
When you lift your visor, what
rushes in?
Cold equations?
Scent of pinyon?
Woodsmoke?
Whose vacuum
makes the difference that we seek?
--Christopher Cokinos
--at the Mars Desert Research Station, Crew 141, southern Utah
Hum of the pack.
Tubes that have their purchase
on the helmet's clear globe,
scratched surface of that world,
view and obstacle, as though
sight is what we need alone
to face the variegations of
this terrain and the next.
Wind on the skin, just
slits of vents. Ingenious,
a kind of sadness.
We call it protection.
In walking our arroyo, a wish.
The habitation's transit.
Our capitulation.
Years before, along the rim
of a crater, along tubes
of lava, stratigraphies
charted by King and Gilbert,
they practiced with scoops
the proper motions
to sample lunar soil.
They drove ungainly rigs
in suits so firm
to move a finger
was exhausting.
For awhile it's enough
to see through plexi.
Then the hand lifts
to skin and remembers
it's a glove, it's glass.
When you lift your visor, what
rushes in?
Cold equations?
Scent of pinyon?
Woodsmoke?
Whose vacuum
makes the difference that we seek?
--Christopher Cokinos