Poetry for Engineers: A Martian Rover Sends a Postcard Home

Already, I’ve almost forgotten rain; I know I will never know that again. I move forward with the powers you gave me to live up to my name, Curiosity. This is a land without leaves, fronds, or spines. If there are plants, they are small and supine, dust hidden, like light here, filtered and sand softened, at home in the thin air, thousands of motes so small they seem to be fluid, more fog than firmament. Shadows, few and far from here, I know I must go to them to see if they hold order or mayhem or just another common rock or two. If a machine can miss the Earth, I do.