What the Rough Kept

They mapped the scarps where the ground stayed quiet — cooling held in ridges, the give kept in stone.

In the rough the catalog thinned. Ejecta over older lines the way gravel sits on a rut and the road looks whole.

Near Rachmaninoff the long landforms lose height toward the rim — not gone, under throw.

Mariner named a few kilometres. MESSENGER raised the count. Now the quiet places lend what the rough had been hiding:

ten to thirty per cent more than the smooth maps could hold — kilometres already under the throw while the catalog looked elsewhere.