Do you think the earth has lost
its atmosphere, Willie?
Samuel Beckett

Mockingbirds no longer pinwheel
through the sky and oaks are much
weaker in their applause. The man
at the bus stop keeps pushing out
steam into something that’s more
like nothing at all. We’re beginning
to see the spaces between molecules
and what we have to say tends to

die at our lips. There is a noticeable
lack of music and fire. Many of us
will freeze in Chicago; some of us
will turn green like the patinas along
the more ancient edges of things. We
are libraries whose books go unread,
architects of heaven and earth now
that the one is the other, so to speak.