One Day
One day
Your phone will be quiet. Your inbox empty.
One day
Your television will be silent. Off air.
Your channels. Crickets.
No voices to fill the void.
One day
You will look out the window
To empty streets. Trees silent statues,
ghosts with memory wrapped in their rings.
Cars rusted. Crushed. Immobile.
One day
your planes will not fly
fusilage from the sky scattered like lawn ornaments
Diverse. Equal. In their display.
Inclusive in their landing.
One day
the signs of your time here
will fall under their own weight
Billboards. Boardrooms. Bored brothers in arms.
One day
Your garage door will remain shut.
Your on call car will not come.
Your clothes will not be cleaned and pressed, presented to you on hangers.
Your coffee will not be brewed.
Your breakfast will not be cooked. Nor lunch. Nor dinner. Nor supper.
Food a distant memory with no one to grow it, pick it, package it, deliver it, sell it, buy it,
only you to eat it.
One day
there will be nothing left to drink; no water, no milk, no tea, no grain.
Nor a grain of salt.
One day
there will be nowhere left to go.
Not North.
Not South.
Not East.
Nor West.
Not up nor down.
Stuck. Solidly in the middle.
One day
Your homes and halls will be empty. Silent. Haunting.
You will not notice the tattered curtains, the threadbare carpet, the tarnished frames of those you revered and the ghostly edges of frames that came before; proud reminders of who you could never be.
One day
the mirror will not tell its lie
One day
There will be no one and nothing left to consume
One day
nature will take back what is hers, and she will not do so gently, but violently and tooth for tooth.
One day
There will be no one left to ask what happened? How did we get here?
No one. Not even you.
©Lisa Rogers. All rights reserved. Yes, a human wrote this poem.
It’s a poetry kind of day. I suppose I’m feeling a bit maudlin, lately.
Very nice. So sad and important.