After Rapture
/Clay Waters
The clocks are stopped
still you know it’s time
to take down the leashes
and walk the whimpering dogs
who didn’t go to heaven after all
Passing
no glass pebbles
glinting over strange ruined beauty
only cheese shop
bike shop laundromat
each in its ordered (?) place
not abandoned
just stepped out of for forever
(everyone’s so special when they’re gone)
Sensing
as you line up the leashes
and fill the bowls
and watch the shadows sharpen on the sidewalk
that something is waiting
with long but not infinite patience
for you to change utterly
Author’s Commentary: "After Rapture" spent time in fuzzy gestation, but the original idea was likely hatched by an article about an ostensibly real service an atheist was providing -- to care for believers' dogs after the rapture prophesied in the Bible. The thought of a mostly abandoned landscape full of needy lonely pets was arresting. (That's not necessarily what's taking place in the poem, which is a mystery to me.)
Clay Waters has published poems in The Santa Clara Review, River Oak Review, Poet Lore, Literal Latte, as well as Roanoke Review. He lives near Orlando, Fl.
