by David Thornbrugh
We say
it happened without warning,
as if one morning the sky
inverted and ejected cities,
forests, deserts, oceans
peppered with fish into space,
but it isn’t true,
we saw the headlights glowing,
we heard the footsteps echoing,
we felt the slackening
of once-tight embraces
and we knew what was coming,
we knew the message of mortality
in one melting ice cube,
the fly on its back
kicking at the sky.
David Thornbrugh is an American poet currently living in Krakow, Poland.