Lost Civilization

Henry Hart

Wine festered（溃烂） at the bottom of my skull.

Wind blew the night's big ideas off the trees.

The moon had frostbite（冻伤，冻疮）. The stars did, too.

Be kind to animals was mother's mantra（咒语）.

Do your duty was father's.

Their ghosts breathed on my rear-view mirror.

I parked by a locked bank.

An SPCA volunteer guided me across ice

to a llama（美洲驼） starved by a bankrupt farmer.

Dogs lined up behind the topless Cadillac

of the Christmas queen, polar bears

crooning（低吟） Elvis hits on a plywood iceberg.

A police car uncoiled red razor wire

from a siren. Shriners

traced signs for infinity in dwarf Corvettes.

I shivered among Cub Scouts

staggering into wind like Arctic explorers,

lips blue as their uniforms.

We marched beneath a pink cloud on a spacewalk

past Main Street's plastic Santas

to a big tent by Saint Francis Church.

Warming my hands around cups

of mulled cider, I listened to Youths

for Christ argue about beasts in the Apocalypse.

After the first snow, the floats huddled

in the parking lot

like a city buried beneath desert sand.