The future's birth

After the explosion, of course
it is hard to get my bearings;
to tell if I am whole, or safe, or
alive. I can hear only one
high monotone inside my head,
shutting out the noise of Earth.
My glasses are missing, and
my first thought is—can I undo
the last few seconds? Try again?
Then the solace of movement:
stumbling over pavement, aghast
but pretending as always that
I’m not really surprised or alarmed.
Busily, I act the part: assessing damage,
picking pieces up, looking around,
as if making sure danger has passed
and I can now recover from it. But
I'm not really here; my mind looks 

far away, plotting as a ship's course

the changes that will follow this:
the future’s strange new shape
now forced upon it like a mold.
All this in an instant; but also
later, in the silence of an empty room,
days or decades later on. The fog
which obscured that panicked second
in its moment—preserved it, too:
a snapshot of my own ended different life
and the moment of birth for this.

December 2019