From the window I can see it has already happened,

in the time it takes a tub of time to tip.

Lawn and pink impatiens pulled

inch by quick-inch under the lip. 
It tumbles down the stairs in practically

no seconds: me. My saddest shoes are flat as tickets

to an exhibit that’s just appeared.
The lookalike lake is opaque as a spill in MS Paint,

as the yard before anyone saw it.

It takes my reflection under its wing.
It is cake batter, panless, tempting each direction.

Invites the eensy clovers to change behind its towel.

Which is grey, drenched, immense, curiously

gritless, silken, impossible to lift.
Maybe Google Earth has something, just here, to hide.

A vein in the brain blooped like a metallic-inked pen.

Or Celeste, Universal Dentist,

could be taking an impression of everything.
I have always loved the little sharp-edged tools.

A natural assistant, I select a spackle

blade, row out, face almost in the starless,

rudder of a nose set to “hover.”

My idea is just smooth things over.
(I’m not really talking to my husband,

who is, by the evidence, to blame—

plus, he’s busy trying to jerry-rig a barricade

with the cement’s own packaging.

Surviving fragments of the text suggest

we have less than twenty minutes.)
That’s when I notice the ant

stepping into the slow surf, matte

Jell-O on a windless expanse—

Whoa there. Hey. Hey!

She tries to turn but can’t. 
Then, without a backward glance, her friend joins her. 
It’s girls’ night out at Aquafit, with weights, 		Yes, someone has

in the deep end, and I am powerless 			        tipped the carton

to stop them from registering.				        labelled “evening.”
It’s easier once you’re in, isn’t it?

says the second ant, in pheromone code, to the first,

who sweats a clumpy leg-lift.

The shadows flex and lengthen.
Whisked egg whites, soft ice cream,

blue smoothie, maple filling, wild

honey, ranch dressing, pudding with carrageenan,

barbecue drippings: a montage of pools

these gals have lapped before.
I can’t handle it anymore.

I grab a dead leaf from fall’s waterfall 		        Disclaimer:

and scoop them out. They are two tiny elephants 	pouring may

towing their haunches to the statuary. 		        affect the

Time is speeding up as the cement slows down. 	        Season.

If I wash them clean, they’ll drown.			
I should really stop looking, but, New Scene:

an earthworm spikes the surface, seamstress

pursuing her childhood dream of becoming megafauna,

a lake monster, and enjoying some early success.

She’s gained a costume’s worth of extra skin

like a hooded cobra’s crinoline

just by being in her element.

Who am I to play the skeptic?
My gaze only solidifies her fame. A dozen more ants

wade in to photograph her body with their jaws.

The trap is more complicated than any of us know.
“Should we be wearing masks?” This is the first thing

I say aloud. My husband, a man who cannot resist a homonym,

recalls a time he daubed grapefruit-scented clay

all around his eye holes. Though synthetic,

it parched like an afternoon of real sun,

the kind of singular experience statistics suggest

will add scenes to your life, stretching it.
Lines like that make me want to clock him.

I have just the trowel, twitching its shadow		        The end

like a minute-hand over our moonscape, dripping.	is coming!
“Do you find it hard to breathe?” he asks. “The particulate…”

Yes, god yes. With all my heart.

We twang twin yellow bands around our heads

and secure our personal bubbles,

as the intercoms on aircraft instruct, “before helping others.”

Gravity, a rule I don’t especially understand,

is still visibly doing its thing.