blast-furnace climates filleting
forests, lakebeds dusty with denials knotty
convolutions of narrow-gauge rail, hauling rare earth
through impossible passes
adjectives
breed adjectives, describing mercury
in the glass the pinstripe harbinger
of barometric pressure, a losing streak of sandbags at the door
at least, something like that, something
like the island chain erupting, the megaquake
or asteroid next time something to
define new-normal and betrayals
old as Eden
fifty centigrade in Baghdad, fifty too
in towns near you, or will be under cloudless skies, or with
a year of rain between the noon
and midnight
my first-edition poetry I burned
to keep us warm the books with funny looks
and tetchy tempers, pyres by sacred rivers
when rivers ran
my first edition poetry I braided into fronds
against skies on fire a hundred years extremes
of this and that, parliamentary sludge
and end days
soft as butter pats
tell me what you remember, past fault lines
of some saving grace, the sea
a risen god or was it that the land itself
just sank a bathtub drunk, a quiet breath
then gone
