Even antimatter is in decline
as things heat up before the big
cool-down. In the time it takes
a fox or wolf to form in the womb,
the billion atoms of my body will
have fled to more energetic fields.
I wave goodbye but as they leave
duplicates arrive and occupy
their place, determined as the kits and
pups. The past piles up inside this me,
and a foraging unromantic melancholy.
We remember our own lives
only slightly better than novels
we’ve read. When I consider this
debris I’m reminded of an image
broadcast yesterday. From a war
about to be fought, or ongoing
and unwinnable, without soldiers.