Michael Lauchlan

End Time

On a sharp night, we walk
by the park and the sky opens up.

We can’t know it, but one distant
visible star has gone cold

and continues--a carbon orb adrift
through nights that soon

will imperceptibly dim. Light
pours toward us like water
from a hose cut off mid-stream.

It may have been a splashy exit.
The air is crisp and traffic hums.

All is quiet in the park tonight--
not even the innocent detonation
of a backfiring truck. When havoc

on the Tiber made Rome
a center of nothing, how long

did the stubborn scan provincial roads
before they learned new words
for hunger and dread?

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Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Nimrod, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review and Poetry Ireland. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press (2015).