after the anthropocene, the rain—
acid, apocalyptic, full of rats
bloody in the subways they slap,
bang, slump against the silver,
yellow, black of the N train—
eternally exposed at Union Square—
where we bought books and sang
copper into velveteen shells
(two guitars fighting over the same
late career Willie Nelson), into
students and stoners and Harold
on the corner selling stolen comics
for eight bucks and change—
but it’s all green now, green
spores carried on green light,
sleeping gentle over steel bones,
crawling rabid up Gandhi and
Washington, watch them fall—
all moss and radioactive daffodils—
free and burning and bright
green like the dogs on the streets
ten feet tall and all grown up,
dressed fancy in ivy and pride—
the dogs want for nothing, the dogs
want us to know it doesn’t matter
that we destroyed the world, we
who once returned a robin—blind,
wet, mewling—to its mother’s nest.