après nous, l’enfer

up so early the dog has no interest,
and dark even if the days weren’t already

chewing toward the autumnal, the air
choked with ash, the news struggling

to explain how much is being lost,
hour after hour, a full month now,

a fire the size of an eastern state,
a town i loved gone to flames,

gas station, market and school,
a place i might have moved

just to watch the seasons pass.
another earthquake in haiti,

another summer hurricane,
saigon again and again,

children shooting children by accident
or for standing on their shadows,

a virus smarter than half of us
and us at their mercy again.

i’ve been dreaming of ancient woods,
heavy branches bending into the earth,

taking root, underfoot a thirty-acre
fungus ten thousand years old,

the distant mothers of dolphins
padding by on their hooves.

in the chaparral it’ll be decades
before the lichen return

a melding that feasts on air,
accepting the world as substrate—

if only we’d live that clean—
our footprint in the electric forever

less than the shadow of a butterfly
burned to nothing in the solar wind.