The Impossible Future

There was a series of unfortunate events
and the world passed us by in a flurry.

Before we knew it, we looked around
and didn’t recognize a thing.

We see trees and buildings and fenced yards
with cats slinking through them.

We see lonely houses with elongated towers
and crows waiting in the trees nearby.

We see rows of little birds on telephone wires
and the sun glowing red behind their black figures
and the neighborhoods growing dim.

The dark rising from where dark rises from
with the sun sinking in.

We slink through the shadows in a world
going to shadow, and don’t know how we got here.

These are the neighborhoods that turn
with the deepening dusk in a foreign language.

As we slip by invisibly because we’re not
from around here and never will be
from around here even though we live
down the street.

The town has a consciousness
that we cannot penetrate, as we slide
past the fences, the yards and the gargoyles,
the cats hurrying from bush to bush,
and the crows eying driveways.

This is all part of a story not meant for us.

This is our impossible future.