Abrupt

Ash is in the air
All the little children are leaving.
Look around you:
the last great migration’s
begun.

There was never a promise
– no rainbow from God –
that we would die in a warm feather bed.
All the businessmen melt,
and the generals huddle.
They’re at their best when the meat
begins to boil.

A woman at the spaceport
sniffs the air and gags.
West wind is coughing pine,
the ruptured muck of forests:
grub-flesh stink and blister-singe.
Ash swarms down like hornets.

Then the asphalt heaves,
and in the whipping trees
monkeys, pissing, howl!
at the ten machines. This is

not another Ice Age.
Plant your feet – you can feel it spinning
It is the violet doorway
the vortex through the Human.

Something wafts above the stinking hordes,
survives.

Great green stalk of life
Kindly deigns to coexist
With us pink humans