From Distant Futures

From distant futures:

i.

In the deeps

of an acid sea

lie chunks of metal, corroded slowly:

sunken ships,

fallen monuments,

lingering shells, empty, haunted--

lifeless steel ghosts--

no algae, no redemption--

the circle of life, stopped in its tracks--

no long blue songs, just perfect quiet

but for the dark, automatic swish

of the current,

slowly rolling, for as long 

as the sun lives, dead water on

a dead planet,

currents

slowly rolling

ii.

The world is orange on gray.

Only a dusted, finished tiger's colors,

without the plush

A dimming sun burns low through smog,

a humming glow, toxic, radiating

onto smoothed gray boulders, simple

as chalk drawings.

A volcanic plain, all basalt and ash--

no algae (prey to a molten red flow,

eons ago -- gone up in smoke)

So now, 

nothing moves...

only the barren wind with its dust, 

dry and lifeless, slowly rolling--

For millions of years,

slowly rolling

iii.

An asteroid drifts through cold space--

slowly rotating, a little momentum conserved

(why not?)

A blue nebula

Thousands of thousands of miles away

and otherwise, just the black of space

and the cold white perforations once known,

on a blue marble,

as Stars.

No day, no night,

no days or years or time -- 

slowly rolling, dry and isolate,

cosmic eternity, spent

slowly rolling