Mike Dockins

Postcard from an Orbiting Satellite

There’s little time for words, & even less space.They must be jettisoned: may nouns & verbs sailEarthward--goodbye, goodbye--may they splash like meteorites into tropical water, papery flakespeppering the surface--food for jellyfish & diatoms.Images only, pleas: an anchor bobbing, a luminous star, the planet ripped, ablaze. The CPU murmursstar, the planet ripped, ablaze. The CPU murmurslike a schoolgirl, dreams of endless pi. The cameratrains on the slash of the Maldives, dreams of saline molecules in the Indian Ocean, its lens unblinking,black as a mako’s eye, little planet of violence.The camera snaps a dolphin carcass, a jagged reef littered with tire shreds, sludge, holey pop cans.The camera snaps a single atom of hydrogen....The camera snaps a single atom of hydrogen....The hardware will never rust, will circle long after the last tickings of the last clock, this orbit a dark halo--goodbye. The camera clicks & clicks: aspens, pines, the last sequoia; mosquitoes, wasps, the last locust....And this: a fault ringing the equator, halving the Earthlike a melon--goodbye, goodbye--a string plucked by a careless moth, its wings nounless, verbless.by a careless moth, its wings nounless, verbless.