This cloud is no mushroom
not even muscaria
it is skull on a wrung neck
of fiery wind
no gentle spores float
from the tumourous head
which is swollen with grit
to seed a black rain

A green light throbs deep
and the longboned quake
as a tinkle crescendos
a grinding of rock
shifts the contour of hills

On his spot Rabbit thumps
as the backscreen rolls by
and he reels at the relative
tilt of home fields
He runs     and runs on
past white rats treading mills
on cancerous shanks
Rabbit screams his mute scream

The scape simply drops like a skirt
the sky streaks down
still his piston hips work
the fur falls in tufts
It is enough
It is surely enough

At 45 we were caught off guard
by a heart attack
But from then on we knew
The shock was as though
when an apple fell down
from a low bough in Eden
we in the garden were struck
and     since     have lived stunned
by the first clout of gravity

Mortality now for this wobbling planet
of curious mutants     lies
in the palm like a speckle-shelled egg ¾
or the fragile skull
of some tiny     extinct bird