#MIDDLEBURY
Drone
Kazim Ali
Do strangers make you human
Science fiction visiting bodies as cold fact
What unknown numbers govern our genes or phones
A constant thrum from outer space
Snow makes a sound in sand
You are seen from far far above
Unheard and vanished
bodies dismember to dirt
Hardly alive, hardly a person anymore
Who will I be next and in that life will you know me
About this poem
“‘Drone’ considers our lives with drones in the sky that may kill us or just capture our images and/or our ‘data.’ But it also considers the ‘drone’ in classical Indian music, which has a different role, that of giving the temporal its constancy, a way of seeing the divine endless in the momentary. Which drone is which? Who is god now?” – Kazim Ali
About Kazim Ali
Kazim Ali is the author of “Sky Ward” (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). He lives in Oberlin, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Kazim Ali. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
