A Shattered Chessboard

Sitting on a piece of wreckage, the reporter
hunched forward over her thin notebook computer
so that her body put the screen into shadow
and she could read the words of her notes as she typed.

Under an awning the military put up,
Dr. Blake stood in front of three computer screens
that were displaying real-time satellite pictures
of the wreckage from scanners biased to receive
ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.

Dr. Blake stood in front of three computer screens
but he wasn’t looking at them or the wreckage.

Miss Stapleton sat staring at her computer,
typing quickly, her lips turned down in a slight frown
of concentration as she formed her thoughts in words.

“What’s Miss Stapleton typing?” Dr. Blake wondered,
as he looked out from the shade into the sunlight.

In the afternoon sun the wreckage on the ground
created patches of almost pure black shadow
contrasted by glare so bright colors were washed out.

Two of the three computer screens used false-colors
to render ultraviolet and infrared light.

All three screens displayed a mis-matched patchwork of squares
that made the wreckage look like a shattered chessboard,
broken, scattered—a pattern, but a pattern lost.

Miss Stapleton sat staring at her computer,
typing quickly, her lips turned down in a slight frown
of concentration as she formed her thoughts in words.

“What’s Miss Stapleton typing?” Dr. Blake wondered,
as he looked out from the shade into the sunlight.

Surrounded by wreckage, the scientist frowned, too,
then looked down, and then looked back to his computers.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



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