SAN FRANCISCO, SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

 I. Apocalypse Harbored

 Remember skyfall, that end of summer still-born dawn? 

That sky—once looked to for rainbows— 

cast a crucible, birdless and ominous, forged by wildfires— 

carboniferous vampires—and 

like before a hurricane—flag-limp space.

 

This sunset: 

a prospect blanched, never greening, resonating 

but faded to scorched amber. 

Damp, sticky miasma smears like grease 

to grass-hosted palms holding the pen 

that attends this drama of dying shop 

running emp(l)aced.

In ebbing ticks, 

we by cloud castles of whipped sand construct 

diversions for hollowed-out courage. 

So clocks, in this narcotic smokescape, 

ever fade from sense.

 

II. Sunfreeze

 2–1/2 hours after sunrise, 

a still dimming sky.

Under the cloaking soot from up north, 

marine fogs may stay saddled to us, 

bridling this apocalypse— 

leaving us panting, as 

under a statued Eos ginned by agora fire 

to sickle a market will and grand its fix.

 Else Shiva pipe a redoubt and rerealm us.

 

Yet today, the neap of steady alarm we will sleep through: 

this day’s dawn is its sunset frozen.

 

III. Rahner Whispers

 Not arrow drawn by Mars’ bow, 

whose flight intends none but 

a stranding vanity—a vacuum flute— 

boxed in Zeno’s canyons, unechoing and sere, 

as the flooding for a moment lies buried.

 But Thy Kingdom come’s assertion is ripening, 

we sniff for it amidst this foul condition.

 IV. Eternity Now

 Duty is the eternal present breathing. 

Presumption must not but abide its hope.

 No step-major can a global change for us prepare; 

rather, now is our ear reeled 

by children’s lament of the marketplaces.

 Our duties no longer allow eterne’s neglect: 

The present corners of streets and wildlands sweat, 

wheezing.

--Douglas Blake Olds, 

reprinted from his 2025 anthology The Inexhaustible Always in the Exhausted Speaks: A Sensorium of Brokenness and Delight.