9 Wanderers

Quicksilvered name,

a bearer of messages,

a little wonder,

heedless of the light

on its moonless way

as the years flash by.

 

Itinerant love goddess,

green and mysterious

star of morning

and evening performances

with no romantic moon

to serenade its journey

 

Third: still blue

despite this travellers’

two-limbed pthiris pubis

scurrying on its skin,

leaving it pocked

and scarring its beauty.

 

Red warrior in

his rusted armour

has two hoplite moons

in his company,

while the caravan

circles the centre-light.

 

By Jove, a great wen

displayed on the face

it presents to both outliers,

and the rock-and-metal

inner circle hoarding

the warmth of Sol.

 

Kronos’s belt is loose:

all those children

consumed in rage,

gaseous in its fury,

this giant ogre

travels slow and long.

 

Caelus – cold, forbidding:

distant as a sky kingdom’s

ruler should ever be

and ever was -

yet magnetic, surrounded

by literary acolytes.

 

Cold, too, is the master

of the sea, Triton close

to hand, thirteen more

follow his wanderings

in the endless round

of nearer and further.

 

One last voyager

does he travel alone?

Or with the others?

Sometimes outcast dwarf,

others fellow traveller

in a company of nine.