Though it couldn’t nudge the heat probe deep enough
below Mars’ surface, the robotic arm
carries on, carves out space in missions
it didn’t belong to, till it does

something Lockheed Martin’s best warmongers
never built it for. The trickling of sand
and soil over solar panels, burying
bedeviled cables, leave me unable

to imagine future journeys we’ll argue
the need for, the cost of, the charm
astrobiology, if it ever had it,
waning as a thousand Oumuamuas

tumble past our bluff and bluster, overhead
each night. I crack and ponder fingers
I wonder what exactly they were
never made for, that they could handle perfectly.