The cloud bank settles on the pinkened buttes, 
Looking like the top half of a baloney sandwich.
He’s not watching it, not even looking at it.
Registering it, is perhaps how you’d put it. 
Registering it like he does all of … this. 

He lived through the Linoleum Age,
When stagflation was welcome everywhere
But the dance floor,
Just to witness all of … this, 
Which leaves mute disregard as
The last working astrolabe.

Birds are out in it and still don’t give a damn
About thunderstorms so why should I,
He asked of himself years ago.
He was always able to size up a metaphor,
Especially this one,
So by rote the thunderstorms, the it,
Fattened to mean all of … this.

When you can’t stop it, can’t even slow 
It as it smears across the plains
You find it grieves you no more
Than a lost hand of canasta.

People expect change from a thing such as this, 
Or at least movement of character. 
Yet there he is, gnarled and crimped
Into himself, stock-still —
Roots surrounded by light instead of soil, 
Out of places to go.