You're Just In Time

All day, sounds from the White City’s streets litter spring scenes
like gum stains stuck to sidewalks during black paved dreams.
Never to be wakened.

Never to be disturbed unless on the off chance that their concrete roots are relieved
of their imprisonment and molded back into the safe molten surface
from whence they initially came.

Trains billow by the street like a jet’s sonic boom circa 1948.
Nuclear weapon drills mean kids under seats.
“Duck and cover” translates to the image of “dust all over.”

Because that’s all there is going to be.
Nice new sneakers?
Dust all over.

Nice Christmas sweater?
Dust all over.
Picture postcard from across the sea?

Duck and cover.
Phone message from a loved one in a dire time of need,
dust all over.

Garbage trucks and sixteen wheelers are 21^st century tombs.
Embalmed in filth by means of crisply baked bones.
Contents speckled white,

left to sparkle like a diamond setting foot
on an ancient Cambodian clay-
more mines.