Darkness sweeps like a scythe from
the billowed sleeves of Winter,
severing everything:  leaf
from branch, root from trunk, time
from time itself, so that
the daysmall stillbirth of morning
finds rigid corpses, strewn amidst
broken pole wires, gaping in
dull amazement at particles of past and
future, scattered across the sidewalk
like fragments of a broken watch. 

Three - o - seven.  The clock stares,
open-faced, hands eternally outstretched
to ward off the blow.   Beneath
trailing wire, frozen sparks gleam
where they landed, expelled by the last breath,
spewed into nothing:  stuck.

Where are the busy, bold beetles
that roll out to profit from the night?
Here and there, in ditches,
where they were struck, belly up,
stiff legs curled over the stiffening ooze
of fractured fuel lines,
breached anatomy.