On Mars

I was in the car driving back towards the Red Stick.
It was dark, but not really, a red glow was lighting up
the horizon, beckoning me like a false dawn,
as the evening lights gave the city its namesake color.
The bridge was just within my view, only a few miles
and semi trucks between the muddy Mississippi and me.
My car and I climbed the ramp, moving steadily
over the arching bridge and I was glad to see
across the river, the few more miles I had to drive.
As I crested the bridge, I looked out over the horizon
to the oil refineries with their lights twinkling.
I felt as if I were looking over the landscape of Mars.
The narrow towers of lights were like skyscrapers
and they brought to mind whole cities of aliens,
little green, purple, or pink people living in the towers,
as strange to me, as I would be strange to them.
Looking back at the city, there were more lights,
like another foreign landscape on some distant rock,
only it wasn't so far away, not so strange to me
and yet all those lights, were the lights of strangers.
With this in mind I began my descent, to fall back
into the atmosphere and meet up with the earth like
an astronaut burning back to earth like a fallen star.
I piloted my car into the parking lot beneath the glare
of streetlights and looked towards the flicking blue
of television screens from the neighbors' windows.
Taking a deep breath of the night air I walked into
my house and turned the light on the porch off.

October 1, 2002