in a narrow field
of white straw, sun-dyed,

chasing each other's skirts

a memory of life
brushed his skull

they caught each other's fabrics

an umbilical flicker
touched her headset

things that crash at similar speeds
kissed in the silver mid-stream

blonde spraypainted grey
a shimmer on the lawn at midnight

crowds of evacuated nakeds
standing bare as flagpoles: people
who stare into the headlights of approaching angelics
with their footprints torn up behind them
and their shadows strewn on ragged rocks,
cardboard painted charcoal on the television sand;

as they kissed across the tennis net
they thought of all their gassed families