After the last movie theater closed,
cluttering the world with popcorn debris and unnumbered Curies NASA reverted to using steam locomotives. The astronauts in their unexpectedly heavy white mummy suits sweated and itched in the smoky, manic compartments all the way to the youth hostel one town over where the older crew got the bends from dust in their blood. An old woman with the moon in her eyes served them soup made from hemp rope and lemonweed then offered beds requiring a series of keys and a free shove. A movie was shown, an old celluloid copy and the astronauts' eyes were like searchlights as Ray Milland manned the ack ack gun and smiled at them in their theater-style seats up in the air, astonished, easy targets.
I was drawn into the mood of this poem as apocalyptic scenes are occurring all across Canada as the wildfires burn and towns are evacuated. The moon in the old woman's eyes is a wonderful description. I can see the milky film on her eyeballs. I love that there is a post-apocalyptic time in your title. We live in hope. Remember when I once was a sunny optimist? Now a fatalist. Not happy about that.
ReplyDeleteNice. I like the half-shaman-like figure of the old woman who is somehow (to me) the key to untangling the knot of this apocalyptic world, her soup offering something of a comfort/escape from the astonished fright at their new world.
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