An object

             travelling fifteen miles a second

                          in close collision course

                                       trajectory 
I thought of the earth

             receiving the blow

		in her solar plexus

                                       radiating nerves and ganglia
two million hectares

             rivers, forests, floodplains

                          exploded instantly into winter

                                       such terrible alchemy 
the crisscross of lines

                          across distended hips

                                       tears to amber. 
I could be there

             first in the queue

                          taking the hit for our planet
                          sensing the shiver as the rock enters

                                       a new species in deadly motion

                                                    riding shockwaves: exogenesis.
There are other scars below the crust

             keloids of industry

                          we’re an industrious race

                                       always working, metabolizing, metastasising.  
Proof runs along the fault line

             in warning shades of phosphorous green.

                          tailings, diggings, burning, tunnelling
                          liquid reserves in aqua blue

                                       iridescent blooms and red tides

                                                    the trace of radionuclides
                          carbon spheres changing the signal

                                       in sedimentary rock layer
arriving faster than the speed of sound

             undoing all our fine damage

                          at the point of impact.