There Is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier
There is absolutely nothing lonelier
than the little Mars rover
never shutting down, digging up
rocks, so far away from Bond street
in a light rain. I wonder
if he makes little beeps? If so
he is lonelier still. He fires a laser
into the dust. He coughs. A shiny
thing in the sand turns out to be his.
Copyright © 2014 by Matthew Rohrer. Used with permission of the author.
“I was coming out of a bar in Manhattan in the rain at night. I felt lonely. Then I thought: there is nothing lonelier than that little guy up there on Mars, never shutting down. And if he’s beeping up there, how much lonelier still, that no one can hear it. Still, I like to think the engineers designed him to beep.”
—Matthew Rohrer
Matthew Rohrer
Born in 1970, Matthew Rohrer is the author of several poetry collections, including Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007), and A Hummock in the Malookas, which was selected by Mary Oliver for the 1994 National Poetry Series.