Clang

The moon must have slept over somewhere.
Failed to change phases from the previous night.
But, then, jasmine seized up just the same,
And kept its fragrance to itself.
An ocean wave rose, then crouched down
to slide to shore without a sound.
Wolfpacks stopped suddenly to look around
as if one of them was missing.
Morning Glories opened briefly that night.
A bad dream startled them awake?

No one saw a thing.
People had ceased to observe,
or no longer spoke the truth.

A missile armed with 14 nuclear warheads
wobbled over in an Iowa silo
to make a single ‘clang’ against the wall,
although some skittish operators claimed
they also heard the briefest ‘clink.’
If all 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world
had all clanged and clinked at once,
perhaps people would have noticed
something queer going on.

A butterfly species went extinct on a highway
through the Amazon forest, but that was only one
of dozens of species to get gone for good that day.

Another new record for the heat on its way.