Sampling and photographs
over years until drying out.
A flight of ages. When they go
they go for good.
They say goodbye
and know the silting red
will be dug up for graves.
They know the shallow dips
and angled hills will be
playgrounds, outbacks, landscape
views for all. They know money
doesn’t matter. After setting down.
The rovers didn’t need to
disconnect in this
way. They did and then they
did not.
In millennia
it will be human bone in the loam.

—

Christina M. Rau is the author of the Elgin Award-winning poetry collection, Liberating The Astronauts (Aqueduct Press) and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove and For The Girls, I. She is Editor-in-chief for The Nassau Review at Nassau Community College and founder of the Long Island poetry circuit Poets In Nassau. http://www.christinamrau.com