Apocalypse Now

Men wrestled escaped bees on a roadside deep in flood waters.
A flattened cornfield marked by the shape and force of the torrent.

A mud-soiled child on a stoop.
Wide plains transformed into lakes.
The eerie chime of a train signal stuck on a loop.
The financial loss of a corn yield.
The interviews with the afflicted on the edge of a field.
The interminable and sour stench of silt and sewage.
Children’s toys and clothing heaped in brown puddles.
Humble and cherished items.
Stacked in ruins, muddled.
The ceaseless clack of helicopters.
Flying low through ashen skies.
The return of a painful memory.
The forgotten lies.
The sight of broken walls,
sagging houses,
a wrecked car.
Submerged in mud and char.

People converged on the council grounds.
Seeking information.
Supplies and donations.
Conversation.
Hopes of an online connection.
A future that has arrived in all its chaos.
Lack of water.
Intermittent power.
No communications.
Dwindling, limited or restricted
reserves of fuel and food.
Uninhabitable homes.
Sudden unemployment.
Destroyed infrastructure and road networks not renewed.
The notion of the social contract is removed.
How thin are those strands.
That bind us together.
When the grocery store shelves are bare.
No banking technology means
those with no cash will go without.
But for the goodwill of others, no doubt.
Broke but still breathing.

That requisite moral and ethical choices are required is patent.
Find ourselves surprised, alarmed, by our own thoughts, latent.
We may dwell on what could have been,
what is
and what is yet to come.