retraction

peel back the landscape.
raze buildings, make unlevel
the clover leafs and straightaways. we are
excavating a country.

we made a mistake.
buried it alive.

it was still wearing a promise ring
when the dozers pushed it under, and
we have forgotten the inscription
in our haste to hide the evidence.

convert strip malls to swamp:
mosquitos swarm bloodthirsty in supermarkets.
fill in parking lots with
carolinian hardwoods.
sap drips
from telephone poles.
vines creep
along fences, consume them. borders
break down.

even the flocks of plastic bags
that rise with the wind to choke the sky
become imperceptibly snow geese,
carrier pigeons, an army of lost avian souls.

foxes run yipping through cracks in my mind.
bric-a-brac housing collapses into eskers,
anthills, patterns of grass in the dust.
we recede.