¹⁴Carbon

It must be the warmest summer
in ten thousand years because
the beast has been worked out of the glacier
with whited eyes turned inward
and a stomach still full
of sweet flowers.

But it all began much earlier than this,
as a tunneling itch
in a puddle, a cascade that
turned itself into taxicabs and ice cream
and other things held deep in the earth--
like the two figures in Pompeii, caked
in powdered obsidian, same as they were
when their mountain exploded.

Run the fur past the Geiger counter
and sense its simplest element,
black and pure. History
is a countdown, a march
of half-lives becoming less
radioactive even as we walk
and talk and take our place
in its elegant clock.

Originally appeared in Excursus.

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© by Patrick Martin. All rights reserved. No duplication in any print or electronic format is permitted without express permission from the author.