Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat
of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching
the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water
and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold
heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame
Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's
ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed
a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves
and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,
as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills
and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins
and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears
rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.