After the Oil Wars, the big boys
laid waste the fields.

The usual things got said
by poets, pundits, and the common man
left to pick up the pieces.
In a room with a drawn shade
a girl stood gazing at her own
face in a cracked mirror.
Could that be her?
Does the world just go on, then?

Yes: on and on.
And in the early morning sun
a woman sits upon a stair
of broken stone
in the middle of what was once a lawn
in front of a burnt house.
She clutches a handbag, staring straight ahead
as a small wind speaks round her ears.