In the studio she likes your work.

You’re serious. She looks like a child.

You go out for coffee and talk.

Outside your room stars fill the sky.

She gets the house. You send the checks.

Your kid says no. You move out west.

Into the emptiness

you said “I love you.”

You know what’s coming.

There’s nothing you can do.

Long as you did the best you could.

Bred well and built, played safe, got along.

Composted forty tons of food.

Picked up some tricks like writing a song.

A soul sees its temple turn to dust,

or a beast sits dumb in its own waste.

Count the domino days

because there remain so few.

You know what’s coming.

There’s nothing you can do.

Once we could speak against the war,

hold a hand out to those in need,

work so our kids had something more.

Few things were good. One was not greed.

Now we shop in the company store

that owns the words worth living for.

Secure us from the terror

of what lies inside the true.

You know what’s coming.

There’s nothing you can do.

We spent sunshine saved for eons

on nine billion mouths talking at once,

took a few small steps upon the moon.

Our numbers made us little suns.

The sea is dead. The ice is gone.

Left the Stone Age. We’re going home,

cause we lived off a loan

with the balance far past due.

You know what’s coming.

There’s nothing you can do.

Hearth (Stewarts Point, California), 2010