a green fog of leaves
rises from the understory
in a corner of the cemetery
where a hint of winter lingers
as if the highest use of a hill
were to hold our toxic dead
watched over by the faceless blue
spacecraft of a water tower
because we know the aliens
would land here if anywhere
or possibly just hover like
a thought balloon in the comics
brooding over centuries
of loss and trauma
where Chief Logan is said to have delivered
his famous last oration
there runs not a drop of my blood
in the veins of any living creature
after we aliens murdered
his entire family
it’s the kind of town where a child
might vanish on her way to school
and the old folks don’t care
whether you’re black green or purple
who wouldn’t want to land here
it gets quiet at night
no one blinks when a new subdivision
appears in a corn field
or when the barbarian barberry
or knotweed muscles in
people keep to themselves
tend their patches of grass
some heat their homes
on nothing but moonlight
*
after watching the UFO documentary A Moment of Contact