The End of the World

The end - in a parade, that's how it came -
with gaudy entourage:
physics and all her contemporaries:
kinematics and combustion and her confidant chemistry
(they carried her on a throne)
the flayed nudity of the statue of liberty,
the skin hanging as a crude idol,
the flowing expanse of the grand canyon,
the triumph of a rolls royce,
the rats in line and rhythm and roll,
for all the world a carnivale.

It careened lopsided
through the city streets on the back of a mob
gaudy features sucking at the atmosphere
until the streets themselves began to sweat
and they licked it from the roads
and they roared and cheered
until the contents of the world rose roaring
a wave like a wall in the west.

And from where we sat,
watching from our roofs,
we could all admire
the cresting rose of everything: a wave
as it rose and rose
until it nestled the noontime sun a flower.

And as I spent my few in reticence,
as the world glowed with the finality of love,
I distinctly saw a bicycle I had lost years ago
and the street I used to live on
and I thought I saw
a face I had not seen in years
manic in her prescience -
though she did not see me,
of that I am certain.