where we feel ourselves invisible
as pinpricks, as flicked cigarette ash
cold on landing on the sere expanse,
pinion pines unlit by our presence,
the stone floor unmoved, winds unimpressed.

From end to end of every vista
the rocks last as bands, once Saharas,
shallow salty reaches of sponge-filled seas,
estuaries carving channels through muddy banks,
deeper oceans where swam trilobites, land tracked
by creatures we’ve never met—and cannot—
blankets of hellred lava.

We return to visit ancient time,
to descend, to travel back and back
and back to a planet hotter,
to an Arizona underwater, on the margin
of one continent, another, farther, to depths
internal and before living cells,
to these ages of our nonexistence.

We return to marvel at this fleet stage—
our breathing, aware how recent our arrival,
how fast will come the departure,
how rare the event of us, grand and literate,
fatuous, feeble, animal, fatal, trivial.

Pamela Hobart Carter is a teacher, artist, and writer with two geology degrees. Her plays have been read or produced in Seattle (her home), Montreal (her childhood home) and Fort Worth. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. During Covid-times she has added make-a-poem-at-home lessons to her website: https://playwrightpam.wordpress.com/. She is the author of several poetry chapbooks: Held Together with Tape and Glue, Her Imaginary Museum, and the forthcoming Behind the Scenes at the Eternal Everyday.