End times

What would you choose? I’d like eternal life
such as the dandelions aspire to
across my lawn this morning. They will shine
all day in my imagination while they rise,
their golden crown they’ll lift to throw away
turned seeds, the fuzzy diadems plucked by the wind.
I’ll be that stalk remaining, tall, to fall.

But also I will be the wayward seed
descending to flush the storm drain and pick clean
the rainbows of the motor oil’s sludge
across the grates, and maybe I’ll descend
with one of the tomorrows down that drain

and then—Imagination stops me here.
My last poem will inscribe that paradise.