Good one, Douglas! Clever.
Jerome - Thanks for your thoughtfulness, but no worries if you choose to submit your Mars poem. There could be other vehicles reaching Mars as I write! This bouts-rime challenge is really a game, after all. And it's a pretty engrossing activity, I would say.
I like the sentiments in your sonnet, which are intriguing, and reflect reality. So I wouldn't worry too much about the allusion to planet death. How Mars became such a desert is a matter of speculation, as well as whether there was or still is life there. For sure there were no intelligent Martians that turned the planet into an arid wasteland. (And no irrigation canals, which Percival Lowell imagined.) But Earth is, unfortunately, undergoing desertification. Here is an article I found about it:
http://www.greenfacts.org/en/desertification/index.htm