musée mia burrus

At Once City and Country (a pantoum)

As silencing as snow,
the living layer of green buries
another failure of civilization …
what’s left of it a shattered geometry.
 
A living layer of green, berries,
sedges, horsetails, goldenrod, aspen…
what’s left of it? A shattered geometry,
slabs of sidewalk, crushed  concrete poles.
 
Sedges, horsetails, goldenrod. Aspen,
necrotized and skeletal.
Slabs of sidewalk, crushed concrete poles,
stripped of utility, twisted and spalled.
 
Necrotized and skeletal
trees blackened by cormorants and
stripped of utility, twisted and spalled,
guard reeking beaches of pebble and tile.
 
Trees blackened with cormorants and
tattered flurries of gulls
guard reeking beaches of pebble and tile,
screaming, bansheeing as one.
 
Tattered flurries of gulls,
a silver jetliner coming in low,
screaming, bansheeing as one-
as deafening as thunder.
 
A silver jetliner coming in low …
another failure of civilization?
Deafening as thunder,
silencing as snow.
 
2016