The foil tinks along the road
past the bike rack bikeless
in ditchwater. I’m not siting
on a rock forever: a philosopher
holding a mushroom turns into
a birch tree, white ice over freezer-
burned snow. When I came into
the pantry last night wondering
how dark the earth is without
a human, my tears felt more
like sockets that the charging cars
take a day from. Then a month.
Then a year. The longer the night
the less time there is to watch a tree
on the edge of the corporate park
fall over onto an antique VW.
The less time there is to see
a package of Walkers plaiding
a pair of balled-up pupils
inside blue-orange irises.