A Slice of the Apocalypse

^{for Hal}

You hang at the edge, knee deep in splash,
Fly-fishing a summer of remarkable pools.

If overhead, the cosmos unspools, what of it?
It’s between you and Falling Creek,

You, knee deep in atmospheric want.
If it is a remarkable summer, you don’t notice,

But for the tug and tight race—a rainbow
Fit for two hands, ready to reel.

If it is a remarkable summer, wouldn’t the stars have told it
The night before—glowing down summer’s ceiling,

Somehow mapped by the Milky Way?
You take time to land the rainbow, while apocalypse

Slices the air, and a car crashes through,
Rolls six times while you land it.

You unhook the fish—a rainbow of surprise—
As the car slides to rest, and the screaming begins.

You find her first, thrown yards from the wreck;
And the little boy, he is crawling out of the broken window.

You and a friend guide the driver up the bank,
And he is slapping his bare chest for cigarettes,

“I need a cigarette,” he says with alcoholic breath.
The boy cries, but you tell him he’s alright, and the woman is, too,

Saved from the half-spun wreck. The story can’t get any better
Than that. They are carried away, and no one in his right mind

Would follow them into the future weather where
Apocalypse slices summer, and Heaven’s split belly spills its guts

In an abundance of ways, leaving you with a trout, stolen and released;
A hook, cast and recoiled; iridescent catastrophes, lit and dispelled.