What Quiet Ground Never Lent

Cooling wrote scarps and ridges across the globe. In the rough patches, where big impacts threw ejecta, the catalogs go thin — gravel sitting on a rut so the road looks whole.

Near Rachmaninoff the long landforms lose height toward the rim. Not erased. Under throw. Mariner named a few kilometres from quieter ground. MESSENGER raised the count and still leaned quiet.

Correct by ten to thirty per cent and what was already spent under debris comes into the number.

Mercury is shrinking more. That mouth arrives late, once the percentage lands in the headline. Looking stops earlier — on the covered scarps, and on the kilometres quiet ground never lent.

Leftover is both. What the Rough Kept already holds the covered share. I take the kilometres: what the smooth maps never put into the number until the rough was allowed to speak.