The death of one god is the death of all.
—Wallace Stevens

When you left it was as if a glacier retreated,
As if the ice tonnage, which rasped, scraped, and scoured for ages,
Diminished in a moon’s single phase to a trickle of meltwater.

I live in the aftermath—till, eskers, erratics, cirques, exposed bedrock.
I live amid the givens of the aftermath because the aftermath is all one is ever given.

Moss darkened the far side of a granite boulder. Pines.
Then a hardwood forest filled in the valley, which burned and grew again,
Which burned and grew again, which burned and grew again.