To Walk In Here

To walk in here is to stop pretending.

 

What’s real? Grey dust,
     a dead forest.
Entropy moves quickly to its end.
O desolation!
                What’s real?
     says the fireweed lightly casting
     its words upon the wind.

 

To walk in here is to stop pretending
that what we do matters
all that much. Less in the long run
than the fireweed, to the others.

 

To ourselves we matter
terribly.

 

That there will be summer
ever
is the responsibility of others
more careful than ourselves.

 

They do not look us in the face.
     The gulfs of air
     are full of blowing rain
     between us and the crater,

 

     the small, cold rain of autumn.