Into Water (poem)
Into Water
Which would be the more vulnerable if it were only a game
Or should the haptics of drone dragoons invest
the operator with a true-to-life experience
The prey, she
going flat in the underbrush, with a weapon of her own
We’ll say a bolas, charged in a backpack and her glasses
project the enemy view, at the drone’s homing
She fires
it falls
If it is conceived by evil men
Made to shoot flame or blades
Or gaseous poisons
She will run in light-changing camouflage
Distort the timing of terrain matching
Cancel the program with an infrared ray
And the tech made keen by a physical sense of flying
Has a brain-alteration, after fifty or so trials
Become so ethically useless as to need retiring
If it were only a game, standings would sit as evidence
Players proud to have their scores preserved
Every year renew the quest for vengeance, the loser’s turn
The cup to hold, the champion’s name engraved
Into Water
Fortune’s Refugees
friends for years they were not really friends
(2020, Stephanie Foster)