You cover one eye, upset
though sunlight means nothing now
and against your cheek some mother

strokes her child –you praise half
and what’s left spends the night
the way all wounds begin

as a single touch then end
broken apart under the same wind
birds use for a home

and every morning more sleep
is needed, more darkness, returned
as if it had its beginnings here

is touching down, adored
by one hand held out, the other
no longer moving or found.

Before burning, rangers scour
for strays, miss an old

deathwish bison, lenses
isinglass scrabble, heightened spoor

of the next world, lambent,
liminal in windlifted brush fire,

still as an uptown statue.
Zephyrs pare the swart umbra.

Infirm shag ecloses from fluming
helical caul, then retreats.

I take on white noise,
occlude as old world revenant,

rattling chains to
jounce the static of your gaze.

Primary succession. No goodbye.
And when black earth

seethes fade, rangers locate
flameskinned bone,

hear the gooey tar face
pop and spit, and that is that.

then you wouldn’t understand the people we’ve been.
in a field, the last scenarios left on earth
fight each other
and the broadcast shipwrecks in your throat.
to celebrate the end of the visible universe
we smoke a fuckton of honey oil
and wonder what expanse it is that we really haunt.
the first law of emergencies:
that they are never consumed with this much quiet.