Dear Apocalypse

Gust through— good.     Give us
over to the oaks,     sway the old
sheds, the mansions—     shake them down
to the meadows,     unmake us, melt off
what was wasted     of our waking years—
only know     we’re no worse
than former fools.     You could have felled us
a millennium back,     blasted and bludgeoned—
you’re late.     Level us, but let it be
put in stone     (or penciled on plastic):
Here lie some bodies     who bear no blame
for any faults     the future may find
at rest in their ruins.     Remember: we had
a god who grumbled     through us, gave us
his face, held us—     fisted, we like to feel—
even as he ended us.     Excuse him.
He was, like any other man,     complicated.

Reprinted from The Missouri Review, Summer 2007, Vol. 30, number 2

Not like ghosts but like the white robes worn

by deacons they glide into the flooded field
tonight, dark-beaked and substantial, folding down

their wings. Some dreamer standing in my place
might say God got sick of the moon and cut it up
with scissors, folding the pieces

into thousands of tundra swans, letting them
drift down to the breaking ice. I have no fantasies—

they are plump and unholy, loaded up
with bone and blood and pipes
that allow, for the moment,
their thousand piccolo calls

and the mess that pours through them,
cataracting the water. They are not winged men.
They are not robed. They have feet that churn mud,
icicles that claw rough feathers. More swans

are on their way, circling, glazing the trees, the spouts
of their necks stuck out of their bodies’ foul tubs.

They call out. They are as irreverent as tin whistles,
unneedful of blessings, secular as calliopes. Listen.
They’re piping loudest from the ground.

Reprinted from Gray’s Sporting Journal, November/December 2007