On our television screen tonight, caught 
             in that green tint of night vision goggles,

the landscape lies luminous under bright
             moonlight with the flickering stars still

visible like warning lights looming above
             dunes as smooth as carved hardwood

sanded by hand. A narrow road unrolls
             over a slight horizon rise, its unbending

route extending toward a targeted town
             farther north, but before long the camera

lens locates a slow line of armored cars
             moving through, pulling just past a tank

that’s split open, lost its turret; now out
             of focus, it is difficult to discern any more

than a dark outline of that corpse, charred 
             black, fire ignited by secondary explosions.