JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

It’s so quiet, said Oak to Pine

all I can hear are squirrels scampering

and soft brown mooing of cows with

heavy udders. Do you think they’ve

really gone? asked the grass, stretching

green fingers luxuriously.

 

Gone, bubbled water in a little brook

washing away some remaining pollution.

Gone, whispered a doe, leading her babies

down to drink. Asphalt snakes cracking

fissured in the heat slowly relaxed their

grip on the land. Above, mountains boomed

empty, empty and far to the west the sparkling

ocean alive with shrimp, silvery fish, oysters

and lobsters, echoed free, free. Breakers danced

a foamy jig across a shoreline that used to be

a beach, timbers of broken booths and deck chairs

piling up in heaps of rotting planks and scraps

of canvas, providing a shady home for crabs

sheltering from the sun.

 

Good riddance, sighed a little white cloud

sailing across a clear blue sky. Deep underground

two tectonic plates snuggled against each other,

I haven’t felt so delicious since the dinosaurs

disappeared, said the smaller one.