Calculating Our Destiny

After You Have Secured Your Spacesuit Proceed to the Landing Pad

After You Have Secured Your Spacesuit 
Proceed to the Landing Pad 

When you go into the planet
you will come upon bones.
You will see skeletons 
curled around smaller skeletons.
You will see assorted
long, flat bones 
and what 
we are now certain 
are pelvises.

You may think of contemporary art
or you may look away 
and find yourself contemplating
the curve of the horizon
and remember our home 
and its desperate hopes--
philosophies, tubes,
battlefields.

But I ask you now 
to remember that
this is not our job.

I remind you that 
we have come to this planet
to catalog particular 
extant specimens
that concern us in our endeavors
to calculate our own destiny.
 
To search the ash for harder bits 
the way we did it back home 
sifting through the sediment 
from our parched riverbeds 
hoping for driftwood 
for some evidence 
of the hope
of water. 

Proceed with caution
and a steady focus.

Those who come after us
will sort through
ideologies, stories,
whatever may be left
of their wonderment.