Spiritual Planets

When golden words are sent to us on earth,
Or prayerful pleas are answered from on high,
When god-sent thoughts are sent to clarify,
It's Mercury who gives those words their worth.

The fleet-foot boy made courier by birth,
No masquerade his speed does magnify.
No message slow, no news disqualified.
It's Mercury who gives those words their worth.

But never does he give the words their birth.
He just repeats and does not modify.
Not by choice will Mercury terrify.
He says the words, both full of tears and mirth.

For wings he has are not to speed good news.
But bad words said, he flies away rescued.

You're next to earth but closer to the sun
Attracting us to star-sent love and warmth.
You lovingly pull light across your length,
To draw us in, this life of consecration.

Oh, Venus, lady hear our exhortation.
Rule by love is stronger than by strength.
Drawing us from far beyond our length
Helping us to banish altercation.

But sign of woman gives me trepidation,
Your deadly lure transposed across the months
Can motivate by fear-filled shows of strengh
And turn on me with no prevarication.

And life with Venus always sends a chill,
For what can cure can also quickly kill.

Mars -- next to earth, but further and lots colder.
Fighting every inch, every mile to stay warm.

Warrior to the last, blaze the trail, sometimes plunder.
Never reason, never charm.
Never treason and don't disarm.

When asteroid or space debris invades the milky way,
And sets a course toward the earth, a menace with no leeway,

The king of planets protects us all from the careening canonball.
Its gravitational pull protects by soaking up shovelsful.

Jupiter protects us all, but not like a warrior.
It volunteers to take our blows, and thus is that much saintlier.

Saturn we know, not from the planet itself,
But the belt around its waist.

Hog-tied rock, planet in locks,
In the night it's never misplaced.

Mark our time, notch that belt.
In those rings forever encased.

Sickles thrown, cycles felt,
Not restricted, but rather showcased.

The planets stopped at saturn's belt,
or so they once did think.

Then up pops one more rock to count,
and science (embarrased) did slink.

Uranus is a strange one, too:
on its side it spins and spins.

And winks and twinks at huffs chagrinned,
and all life's disciplines.

Come music and come beautiful sights,
Come poets with rhyming vowels.

Through mist and fog and watery nights,
Does Neptune prefer to prowl.

And humor us into intuitive frights
With visions so run afoul.

Create is fine, but avoid the lights,
Protected by reality's growl.

Pluto rules the underworld from oh-so-far away.
Slime-bellied planet, with horns to bray.

You hid from us for years and years,
And acted so blase.

So mysterious your dark frontiers,
So distant are your sneers.

Seven days in a week.
Our counting's complete.
With each day unique,
No matter what you seek.

Five planets we had, add the sun and the moon,
Each one got a day, so festooned.

But, oh, were we shocked, when Uranus spacewalked
On the scene to our dishevled gawks.

Then Neptune.
Then Pluto.
What's that, ten?
Where's that science?

Saturday.
Then Naptune'day?
Then Pluto'day?
Ten days per week?
Where's the math I seek?

I'll leave you with one interjection.
It's a story of math, and it's stored on a scroll
Ten planets we have, and so I am told
Ten days had a week in Egypt of old.
And isn't that a curious conneciton.