The bats have left the bridge

I remember potholes, and black patches of asphalt and dust on the roads.

Cracked lines in a place as ruffled, dry, and yellow as cigar leaves.

The New had cast its lens, focusing an endless light from somewhere unseen.

Driving back shadows, it all became a suddenly real thing, the sky growing wrong with it.

The old growth is burned, smoked, and held in its finite lungs.

The heat is the only thing that escapes, the heat will never try to leave.

In that newness, all which is lit cannot draw breath and becomes extinguished.