Cement trucks own the land, and leave their marks and scat to prove it.

A very confident business, with the carelessness of cultural belonging and humans attracted to it. Humans are useful creatures.

They build wonderful stages …

… to show scat markings to the best effect.

And then the real owner comes by and leaves its mark. Most mysterious.

Plastic habitats lure the insects.

Best to face things squarely, with good humour, and not judge. The new public park, for instance, withering away without water, because, really, it was meant to be a parking lot.

The driveway that took two weeks of diesel roaring to cut from the hill, that is really a collector of salt from the soil. Soon it might be a mine. Wondrous.

Everywhere ladders to heaven, stopped by the smoke, yet still reaching up. They won’t be beaten down!

No human wanting to stand on the ground anymore. Such yearning!

Ladders everywhere, even inside the eye.

Plaster cast aside two years ago ripening now.

The house that spat it out dimming in the smoke as it settles into its human phase.

Now only beauty left, calling for the skies to open above and the waters of heaven to fall.

Or to rise up from the other place!

And to spill out and cut the carefully reformed earth away.

While the gentle living things, the formerly-beautiful ones…

… die away due to a trickle irrigation failure…

… and the hard, pure ones remain, for the new Apocalypse.

That we are building with our hands and eyes together.

And a little help from our masters.

I mean, what are masters for?

For the people, of course.

The tender ones, who need insulation from the world.

The world.

And have made it across the span of time.

To end it at last. To sweep up.

And to retire with a glorious gesture.

And be free…

… within the most carefree of gestures.

Home at last on this strange shore.