Staring at the contours of the hours,
I watch the minutes and seconds
drift across the dunes of time and
realize my life is blown away.
The tectonic plates of months and years
have slipped across a hot spot of
final days, left only volcanic peaks.

Sorrow picks the lock of my future;
yet, you somehow shimmer,
a mirage on the horizon, an oasis
in the desert of time's geography.
Seeking perspective, I've climbed
the eons' highest mount to view your waters.
I will not thirst, saved by your river
running silently toward the ocean's expanse.

At the going down of the sun
will the world be less complete,
the cinched robe of night less intolerable,
as she ebbs away on cosmic string,
emulating a massless, dazed neutrino
blinking in and out of existence,
unobserved and uneffected,
liquored and unloved?

In the wake of a June flowering,
when foxglove lures the honeybee
in six day flash, bud to corolla,
blossom to blossom, parade of stigmas,
digitalis stamen braved, anther at his back,
the bee comes gathering where none else dare.

In parlance of the street he's a dumpster-diver,
scavenger of non-losing wager or proposition tickets.
You'd see his fragile frame each night
walking the isles of the race and sports books,
a condor's aerial eye trained on the floor,
back visible only to casino surveillance cameras.
Seated atop a barstool at the back,
I watch him bend, examine and discard,
through the prism of my scotch glass.
Every food chain has its bottom-feeders,
he brings efficiency to the gambling ecosystem.
Likely not the life that you or I would chose,
but then he has no monthly credit card to pay.
Just now, I saw him straighten and smile,
a parlay ticket will pay for tonight's meal
with just enough left for a brown-bag.
He does not go uninvited to misfortune,
the streets tonight are lined with chance's down.

It'll all be over in about eight minutes,
Give or take, depending on your side of the Earth,
Plasma therapy for the masses.
Just like that, we're all crispy critters,
Pork rind skins flavored with dehydrated sea-salt.
That beautiful aurora-generating magnetosphere,
Shrinking daily, as the planet's poles reverse,
Will puncture like a too thin prophylactic.
The Christians will have just minutes,
Reminding us that we were prophesized
To all go out in fire and overlooking
That we're actually being ionized with radiation ---
A mere trifle to the True-Believers.
Will the Dow-Jones sell off in those final moments?
Will the Russians attempt to launch a Soyuz?
The Brits will take it all in stride with another pint;
Aussies venture on their final walkabout.
As for me, I'm gonna saddle up a pony
heading straight out to greet the Joshua trees.
I want to meet annihilation on my own terms.

We sat in the overlook above the Serpent Mound
in the heat of that garish July afternoon,
sunlight scorching our pallid skin,
like rays through a magnifying glass,
till we could endure no more and
sought the shroud of skyscraper elms ---
halfway houses of leaf, bark and cellulose.
Minutes before we'd signed our names in the visitors book,
like giddy high-schoolers autographing a yearbook,
recording our wayward lover's sojourn
to a site the Hopewell worshipped in celebration of existence.

For what purpose do we worship this ground?
I wondered as we walked beside the curving icon,
that undulated in rolled earthen coils down the *****,
sine-waves loosed from a colossal oscilloscope.
Are these coils symbolic of our future's meandering relationship?
Her exploring hand upon my ****
drew me from thought to evaluation of this unexpected caress.
But for the heat, I'd have shown her what idle foreplay begets!
Great Serpent, this was not Eden's carnal karma
acted out in a second Genesis! ---
though a symbolic egg spews from your mouth.

This sleepy little galaxy,
lost in the milieu of a billion others,
is filled with song and the finite
thrum of human hearts.

This glow-in-the-dark Milky Way,
whose pinwheel arms
are spun with satin stars,
emits Mozart from its crevices.

This nondescript spiral,
axled upon a super-massive black-hole,
frisbees across the universe,
curving it with the maths of Einstein.

Space travelers are we all,
learning the gravitation-crawl.

Did your English toughness lead you to reject
the ancient discontents of history,
to rather seek modern realms of ethical choice, Wystan?
There were no streets named after you,
nor monuments sculpted in the parks,
nothing that would say more than your words.

Words read and pondered in ritual
to better grasp the gruel and poverty of my own.
You talk in my sleep, Professor,
staring back at all that I am not,
teaching that art is born of humiliation.
Did the shaving mirror stare as cruelly?

The task is in the present moment,
Auden's poetry civilly requests a comment.