Doris Lynch

The End of the World Speaks to Us

When I was a child we hid under the wooden school desks, where we would twist our heads and stare out the row of tall windows to watch two semi-wild stallions lope and rear into the sky at random intervals. During each missile warning, we waited, backs hunched, hearts racing, for an orange blast, one my father, a physicist, said we’d never see or smell.

Today a heat dome hangs over Greenland, and water rushes from millennial glaciers forming moulins, channels, and lakes. Water, metallic, yet incredibly sweet.

beside the highway
a crippled doe
laps her last drink