MATTHEW RETOSKE

Let Them All Melt

This one subsuming,
Catastrophe igneous collision

A bouquet of obsidian flowers
Five glassy miles high
Broad stalks ringed with cloud
And polished vertical flagstones

The shining rhyme
Of singing prayer bowls
In lifeless chasms
The eyes of a disfigured child
Hiroshima baby,
Sealed in time folds,
Of the fallout zone;

She whispers to me
In an unintelligible language,

… The earth is warming,
And soon our imaginations
Will melt into evocation …
Swollen rivers,
Inundate the provinces,
And merge with the oceans-
As more petals begin to fall,
And the millpond
Spreads hard with frost again.

copyright MATTHEW RETOSKE