where to tie your star

It isn't a question of if:
We take it for granted the world
will soon end.
We've known this since ancient time.
Any day now

they will play the credits:
the dramatis personae
all left for dead in a . . .
firestorm? A frozen wasteland?
An irradiated plague-infested drought-stricken
country lorded over
by merciless cow-eyed scavengers?

What is the so-called
ended world? It stopped
spinning? Is gravity
suspended, all green things
withered, all animals corpsed
and rotting and earth
become barren as the moon
but for roaches?

I believe
the world will not end.
I am certain the earth
​will outlive our scourge.
Cheerless reassurance perhaps
against the promise of extinction;
all I know is: the green fuses
of flowers still urge
​from cracks in the stone.

​