Size / / /
thunder on the red Martian plain:
a low-grav behemoth grazing
Cat ExoP-3 gouges regolith
its onboard lab working 24:39/7
to analyse microbes
drawn from the blackwater ice
those vibrations dredging a giant
from his chamber beneath the crust
and up he comes, trawling for life
in the terraforming pool
telltale ripples captured in a vid
by 3rd shift lamplighters Carl and Esther
hazy at Phobos station
before the beast exploded from what was
a dry ocean bed for a billion years
to eviscerate the Cat
tendrils of fiber optics from torn sheet metal
dripping visions of worlds to come
a phalanx bristling with cast-off sheaves
of Rice Burroughsian ingenuity