The eavesdrip of his wrath is death,
and daily death, and unlike the last, best
holocaust, it flails like wind-driven laundry under
global scrutiny.
Where science and civics are firm friends,
survivability blooms; then dies in a bucket
overwatered
by arrogance and greed and sloth
seen as shadows on a screen
eating the burning bones of the end of the world.
Into my housebound day, a short walk.
I’m wearing a mask, because I’m
contagious
daily.
Human contact doesn’t happen.
The gap is observed.
We make two circuits of the local schoolyard
and sit it in the shade.
I nag him.
I don’t fully grasp the semblably saurian
reflex of it, a chicken pecking,
even I can see it, and I do it anyway.
This crisis won’t be dead until we are
and we won’t die as winners.