CROWDED HEAVENS OVER NEW JERSEY
Even when we drag the trash cans
to the curb, we look up. A nightlife
in the sky. We heard it’s al-Qaeda,
we heard it’s the government.
Or China, or a pack of creeps all acting
alone. We have concerns. We have these
ammunition bases beside our homes.
We look up even when we walk
our dogs. They come in from the ocean,
they follow some logic, they are, we are
sure, many instances of a single thing.
Airplanes don’t hover, stars don’t
flash in reds and whites and greens.
We haven’t seen exactly that ourselves,
but the videos! But who can trust
the videos anymore? We heard it’s
AI, we heard it’s hobbyists looking
for themselves. Even when we have
our neighbors over, we look up. Lights
are lurking in the sky. Surely cameras.
Surely a swarm of mechanical eyes.
We hold up our kids, think maybe
we will be famous. What’s strange
must have a single explanation. We heard
it’s aliens, Iran, its mothership floating
over the horizon. We are dizzy, our necks
ache. We demand answers we won’t believe.
On our crowded beaches, we will not get
used to these crowded heavens. We are used to
nothing being up there when we look.
—from Poets Respond
__________
Dan Rosenberg: “The current panic over drones seems connected, somehow, to the loss of a shared reality in our country, to the skepticism of expertise that is justified just often enough to leave so many Americans adrift. In the past, when confronted with questions and insecurity, we might have found answers collectively—through community leaders, the government, the local newspaper. How do we make a ‘we’ now, really, with all our institutions in tatters, with so many of us believing in and trusting very little beyond ourselves?” (web)
