Encased in the Amber of Eternity

[Editor's Note: Many thanks to Robert Frazier for giving us permission to reprint his work for a limited time in conjunction with Greg Beatty's "Reading the Rhysling."]

From the vantage of my cabin porch,

I see the flames as waves lap along the coast,

and the Torchships fall like comets,

dancing a St. Vitus dance;

fireflies hovering over the pyre of Portland.

Every major city on the continent has crumbled,

sticks of charcoal and lumps of eraser gum.

Power plants are melted into slag,

paint squeezed from the tube.

Telephone poles stand uselessly in bunches,

brushes shorn of their bristles.

The art of devastation is as subtle as the Florentine flood.

In the countryside the vineyards of the living go on,

but the wine is flat.

Blank televisions stare back at the blank faces,

a poetry of truly blank verse.

Yet here in my mountain retreat only time has changed,

crystallized into honey,

as I stock up for a long winter.

Its length stretches out before me

like the glow of an eternal sunset

spread out over the dark silhouettes of Oregon pine.

The snows are coming;

white pages of a new history

falling upon itself.