I see us with arms linked in a circle, heads forward, the center our benign own little crater, a dark spot of safety in the basement. The sky of Washington, will it be red or black? Will it be cold or fire and how soon? Should I start out on a long dark road south to the family who made me, once mine’s gone? Bandits may be about, like in Chinese stories. In Alaska, I think the Eskimos will start north, to the very rim of the world. I’ll pass dead cars and thriving maggots, perhaps roaches talking openly now. It will be lonely to think of the whales and dolphins mourning for us, making the oceans rise with their crying. And the wild horses on The Plains, all the confused sad deserted dogs. And at the end, will God look down and know a blackened socket where His eye, His only eye, had been?