Contemplating the K-T (Mass Extinction #5) new poem?

by Don McKay

Here in the grip of Number Six,
with its dread parade of signs
and portents, its mix of guilt and grief,
it comes as catharsis
to turn our minds to simple Number Five,
as though turning from a dear parent’s drawn–out decline
to a disaster flick:
                               one immense asteroid,
one blast the size of one
million Hiroshimas as it explodes
into the Yucatan and shrouds the planet
in debris. No one
saw it coming. No Cassandrasaur
forecast destruction to her bored
fellow mega–reptiles. No dour Al Gores,
no love–locked Gaians. No climate
change dino–deniers sponsored by The Brothers
Koch. No one was complicit
or deliberately deaf. Even the nameless asteroid
was innocent as snow.

Before it hit, ammonites
Fibonaccied everywhere in amniotic seas.
Neo plankton went rococo. T–Rex,
though fierce, fit its context comme il faut
as Texans barbecuing ribs at rodeo.

After the impact,
it is said, an Albertosaurus in Alberta
had maybe two minutes. Perhaps her atoms
mixed with bits of asteroid’s Iridium, which —
after the whole mess settled, and sixty–five million years elapsed —
fingered the perp.

Don’t we all secretly adore apocalypse,
especially in movies, The Bible,
foreign cities, and the past? Pop culture
thinks so and the news
concurs. At any rate,
we must be grateful to the blessèd asteroid,
slayer of dinosaurs, facilitator
of our green and pleasant, if now pretty
iffy, biosphere.