Weston  Morrow

The clothes on the clothesline
have gone to rot
in the wind, waving
goodbye like so many tattered families
standing on the dock, fading
far behind. The trees, circled with string,
have stopped reaching
for the sky. One wonders why
bother and drops his leaves
in cribriform blankets to cover
his shame, arthritic feet.
And all this decomposing
comes to nothing, no one
left to smell the death,
or anthropomorphize
thoughtless things. Just crumbling
skylines, opened toward heaven,
mouths filled with broken teeth.
This is what I see, the old woman says,
slouching into her Bergère:
The world falls apart and everyone
saying—See!
I got out just in time.