at the End of the World when the sun eats us up
when everything we’ve worked for-
the nice homes, nice cars, the college degrees and Great American Novels we’ve written
all the cigarettes and jazz and good food we’ve consumed
the pricks and snatches and the pillow secrets-
when it all means nothing,
at the edge of the edge of things,
alive and so frightened
will we turn to the breathing bodies beside us
take the face in our hands,
the lips in our lips,
the wine in our bellies
and speak the last words of love the Earth will ever hear?
Will the light fill our bodies before we have time?
Will the crust beneath our feet
give a last helpless shudder
and swallow our lives in a great and final yawn
of sex and sleep and hunger
millennia old?
Or will we all just vanish
in untimely puffs
and all our atoms stardust
once again?