4. A Place to Consider Apocalypse

A Place to Consider Apocalypse

Just before the power went, the yard
went blue, the light held on them.
One by one, the shuttings off; the VCR
stopped blinking; maybe the sounds
from other rooms also quieted, motors
unsounding their loose purrs to listen.
And then the trees: lifted or pushed
over, roots ungripping the wet earth.
If I were watching, I would have thought
of violence, of a child pulled off
carpet by his collar. Storms grown up
inside, the slow eye turned toward you.
It is worse elsewhere, of course.
The way you told it, the way you claimed
a dense quiet: settled and unsettling...
how you looked and saw only light
and then only darkness. You looked
outward, then inward for days.

(not so much, this one. sigh.)