Imagine snow, that clean
tamping down that mutes color
and makes an art of moonlight. The end 

of the world begins with a terrible noise,
the breaking down
of mechanisms and order, of protocol 

and hierarchies. Sirens
and skirmishes, the cracking of glass and
below it all like a baseline, 

weeping.
Then the kind of quiet
you find now only in graveyards or the woods,  

snow-filled, low-lit, eerie; a hush
as layered as puff pastry. Snow
making indistinct mounds  

of refuse. Our abandoned laptops
and useless phones. Cars
empty of fuel but piled full 

of overstuffed backpacks, the bodies
of bicycles and shopping carts
broken and rusting. After snow  

comes regrowth.
A disgusting process, so much
to break down, to overcome, to be made 

use of. Revision
is always messy. All the parts scattered
like unattached limbs, like the tiny, hard organs 

from the game of Operation thrown down
on a table, corresponding to nothing
recognizable. What is needed  

is time. The seconds collecting like snow flakes,
piling up, untouched now by anything
that is not scavenging, that is not wind.