Mother Contemplates The Apocalypse Poem by Wendy Vardaman

Some days are like that—everything
means something:
two parallel pits in fresh snow, filled with black
ice and surrounded by sediment, by rock
created
in eruption; a perpendicularly driven bread
truck gliding down the road's middle
while traffic in each direction scatters; four dark contrabasses scuttling
up slick stairs
without a missed beat; little knots
of black-shelled figures
at every corner waiting with the same expectant faces,
each gaze pinned
on the horizon, with a regularly-timed
pulse of eye
to wrist to road in the measure of one hardly-noticeable sigh;
the bus that never arrives; the runaway dog;
the lengthening knives hanging from every roof's edge.