The Rwandan dead

News photo of the Rwandan dead

bobbing naked at the base

of waterfall. Wide hips and narrow

shoulders, surely a young woman once

sexually active. No solution

to death's finality.

Is the production and distribution

of food and other essential services

fragile or deeply embedded.

Can or cannot the economy

support the growing or diminishing population.

The Road Warrior, however shallow, 

attracts for its vision of social breakdown

and the sources of regeneration. Of course

Jane Jacobs is more complex and compelling.

The Rwandan dead

had dalliances and alliances.

It is the indignity of their exposure

and the rapid decay of their former lives,

mere mulch, fertilizer

for wild vegetation.

Molecular bonds loosening

and joining new forms.

How do the vast darkness

extending to the ends of the expanding

universe and the temporal light of human

consciousness interact

to make the world?