LET THE GREAT FANTASTIC FLUTTER DOWN.

by Steve Scafidi, from the chapbook Songs for the Carry On

Let it settle here on the mown ground.
     Let the daylight begin to even us out.
Even without we are starting to seem
     more and more and the less we know
the better we feel about everything.

Let the impossible sing. Let all be dumb.
     Let the ant dance under the giant crumb.
Let the weasel think a raw pure thing.
     It slinks and strikes and blinks away
an entire life and no one sees it.

It is so secret. Even what it carries
     away in the middle of the night never
sees it coming and so it goes. We
     like to think we know some things
of real importance. Oh, little skink of

the marshes and the woods, white brief
     light of the mind flashing and dimming
you are so handsome, so charming, 
     so entirely disarming. I have grown 
so accustomed to the approaching fact

of death, I no longer really give a shit.
     Let hell rise up and the heavens fall!
Let the routine letting go of all we love
     and cling to and lose disappearing
soon be something sacred after all.