Woods encroaching on backyard gardens,
keeping the sun out so that nothing grows,
children found hanging in trees like chimps,
like apes. The attacks on fathers,
the nylon thread stretched across the sidewalk
at ankle level. Mothers discovering
empty beds in the morning. But it must
be more than the children and less than all
because, look, there are so many still
sitting in rows, in schools.
Representatives of the life
and physical sciences are meeting secretly
in abandoned fallout shelters. If only we
could see something, we could kill it.