Winding Down (05)

The snow melts, a tropical mold clutches the riverbanks,
and Canada becomes a casino. The Inuit sport swim trunks
and live in museums or harvest milfoil for food.
Mighty Ducks cross the North Pole until their engines
choke in kudzu. The lodestone at the center of the earth
loses magnetism: sailcraft are lost at sea in grand Regattas.
Outside Anchorage, vines of giant hothouse tomatoes
vie with the wings of dragonflies. Mosquitoes fatten
with the blood of wooly mammoths. Gypsy moths,
cocoons as big as footballs, chew holes through cabbage.
Some prefer to navigate the Rockies by raft,
the white lichens on the scree are driven to the antipodes
while equatorial lakes roil with salmon, their skin thick
as prehistoric coelacanth. Tropical carp choke canals,
dolphins who breach the Great Lakes taste like automotive oil.
Genetically defective fruit grow gratuitous lobes. The oak leaf
on the family lawn loses its eight-lobed symmetry. The noses
of dying polar bears ulcerate as they flee north. A glut
of reservoirs with chiggers leads to a blood-letting craze.
Catfish breeding appendages become amphibious as mud-skippers,
and the alligators who swim the Hudson with impunity
eye the old patroon estates with nonchalance. A toucan’s beak
bashes the six-point racks of white-tailed deer in the Catskills
while volcanic lava hardens into cave housing. News
is reported from underground bunkers snoops cannot echolocate.
Cheetahs winding through the Appalachians nip the heels of refugees,
and once in Massachusetts, hamstring their first bull-moose.
The palmetto bug haunts the six-foot- thick walled Mosler safes
of Wall Street banks. The money-trees wilt. Bats in the belfry
of the Congregational church on the common are bigger than ever.