Pat Forster

URANUS

Uranus, hidden from the Ancients' view
                     Saturn they thought was last in line
                     Then Herschel calculated movement way out beyond
                     Newtonian law ravaged thoughts
                     Astronomers tracked eighty-four earth years of journeying
                     To find a barrel rolling on its side
                     Fifteen moons in your firm, noble branch of the family

                     Extraordinary seasons fill one year
                     Constant sunshine North and South
                     Whilst East and West in frigid darkness stay
                     Polar night, forty two years in being
                     Day time, forty two years of constant light
                     Voyager Two's fly-by, logged a planet quiet and still
                     No party boy is this sublime aquamarine ball
                     Enticing, enchanting one
                     Taking a transient look, they spotted nine tiny
                     New moons sitting in narrow bangles, blacker
                     Than black, darkest in all of solar life.

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          Miranda close companion moon though no beauty queen
                     Sports the best mountain climbing in the waste
                     Man seeks to return one day to play
                     Olympian creation named you Heaven
                     A shield from the hundred-handed giant

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           Uranus, father of the Roman god Saturn.

                     It's all happening up there
                     Interstellar travellers reveal a magical universe
                     Ever shifting landscapes, light in all its beauty
                     Flowing to and fro comes out of pitch blackness
                     As space craft sail on, on, past the web of life
                     Towards hazy infinity.