Dear Future,

here you are, showing us
the shape of a horizon 
which gathers all 
the lands on this earth 
under clouds of locust wing,
and all the waters under 
a spreading mantle of illness.
And dear Future, if a butterfly 
coughs in China, from how far away 
would we hear its cellophane death 
rattle? Once I had a dream 
in which all of us lay down 
side by side on a long avenue 
that stretched from the cliffs 
through the towns and on 
to the sea. If we threw 
our last coins into a fountain, 
would we lose sight of
the terrible estates you've 
conjured out of thin air 
just for us?