#17

Driving stakes in the ground,
scratching names in the wood
to make tombstones to tailpipes,
the cars that died on the journey
off the face of the earth.

In this field, the coordinates
of crisscrossing satellites merge
over one point, our melted cars
making a magnet to signal
the voice of a robot god.

All around us, the dirt rises
like waves, reaching up, cresting
and folding in on us, leaving
our faces, our bodies coated,
looking like natural warts on the landscape.

So when the sky turns silver,
metal roof curtain above us,
the nailhole constellations wink down
even though they can't see us,
even though they don't know

all we have done for them.