Our dogs in the sudden silence raise
their heads. Hums of the house gone dead,
the clocks flash 12, the freezer’s hold
softens with remembered thaws.
The power grid’s ability
to self-excite, the integrity
of a communal whole aborts.
Not everything, of course. A breeze
unbundles the treetops and disports,
the nation of frogs exhorts, exhorts,
and here in the room lungs fill and pause.
I think the end may come this way,
some things in the dark at first
just not going forward as they should.
