Writers Island prompt: Clarity

 writersisland.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/prompt-4-for-2011-clarity/

Clarity

Each tech team had its treasured photos.
You can see that in the old newsreels.
In black and white, we rendered them, for traditions’ sake,


but the images that the engineers lay out on silver tables blaze in color--


tarot cards of our destiny.
The infrared shot of a gas giant is the king of wands;
his one red eye draws icy rocks around him like weary sycophants.
The twins dancing in one orbit are the Lovers;


the scientists lost the probe that traced a path through the duos’ violet skies.
But Clarity with its blue lakes is always the Ace of Hearts.
The project leader, desert born, named her and kissed the picture


built from transmitted ones and zeros.
A generation later, his granddaughter skates 
on the target’s tourmaline seas; sneezes 
when breezes bring her the milky quartz dust of the planet’s sand.
She flees for murkier truths than Clarity--cold and blue;


The pilot flies away seeking 
a card of deceit.