Moss carpet coherent over
a worldwide swamp sea,
carmine, olive, blood.
Rare mountains, stepped back
like pipe organs amid an infinite crowd
or abrupt as trucks.
A few are hot-water volcanoes.
Gut-coloured vast tube life-forms
sup their overflow as it streams down.
Breathable air. No night.
No atmospheric weather.
The ground sways as you walk
but you can sleep dry on it
and slice the upper rind like felt
to fold back and get some darkness.
You can eat the knobby vegetal layer
the whole pelt floats on.
It tastes like mushrooms, or bok choy.
Planet Monroe. Moine rua, red bog
as we have named it. Inconvenient, benign,
useless for forced landings.
For a while, after humans came,
it would resist, and make poignant
the little suicide of emigration.