Halfway North

But lo here is hot coffee

and from the corner Nina Simone croons and there is a

snowy slope to the silent white river

stopped from its babble by a sliver of flat white sky

like a shushing finger

against chattering lips –

This cabin is already stove through

with falling pines or burned to cinders and

skittered through with thieving raccoons

and chipmunks sheltering in the ruins

but somehow I’ve been placed in this tableau cutaway

by unseen hands,

unmolested by rodents and wildlife, listening

to the dismantling of the world

tick by tick by tick

as it always has been

brick by brick by brick

as it will always be

dick by dick by dick –

though it’s already finished,

in ashes and ruin,

the world indeed cold and spent

and spilled and rent, silent and bent,

oh –

this place still holds the last of the fire and

sunlight curls upon the tufted snow that blankets the river

and trumpets and newspapers and toast remain

so, and so.

I drink and I rise

and the shards of glass fall away

and I set down this broken cup

and walk into this shattered

and ruined

and glorious

world

destroyed.