Through the Cracks

Poem

Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash

The outside comes inside
Like smoke through the cracking
Straight lines and squares.
We’re backing away

From the floor then the walls
And the doors and the roof.
The ground heaves and bucks.
Dead fowl are omen, they prove

That the firmament’s shatt’ring.
Spheres falling through cracks
Like eggs to the sidewalk.
The kids eat, distracted.

O! The outside’s incoming.
The dark weighs but naught.
We’re close to our skin
Anxious, chilled, fraught.

See the northern sky cracking?
God’s left Paradise.
All’s wrong with the world.
Our worst demons entice

Us to wrack and despair.
We’re sport for their anguish.
Till the outside comes in
In terror we’ll languish.

Gary Chapin

2025

Chapin