by Scot Siegel
If you are reading this from earth
the storm was busy while we worked
They let the dikes go you know
there was no one guarding the gates
The weather was self-effacing
but stubborn; the globe went into a funk
Some were lucky and found arable land
in the unlikeliest places
The last of the freshwater lakes
made excellent farms
We learned to digest salt grass
& lived on reverse osmosis
Everything below forty degrees
was our battery
Solar worked well for a while;
then the wind grew to hurricane pitch
Dust blew over us like a cape
and hovered for centuries –
We had to go off-grid; learned to live
with no economy
The whole race went underground
while the earth yearned to recover
The process was slow; entire tribes
disappeared while we waited
The consumers were the first to go
(we gave them proper burials)
Some said g-d,
after her three thousand year sabbatical
had returned in a flourish
to save us
But we knew better; prayer was a luxury
like books
in the beginning our skeletons
did all the work
Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
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