A Dream Poem by Glen Martin Fitch

(Having fallen asleep on top of an electric blanket)

Well, no one really got the joke at first.
As fields burnt brown,
as birds fell from the sky,
as winds blew hotter,
children cried of thirst.
We lied to them,
but they knew we would die.
Then trees went up like matches,
rivers shrank,
the cities crumbled.
Shaking grew too much to stand.
The day was night.
The geysers stank.
By then the ground
became too hot to touch.
'We're moving! '
someone yelled.
Then each gut felt that tugging sense
as bumper cars collide.
Just so, the earth,
undone at every welt,
abandoned us
on molten seas to glide.
The joke?
Who first perceived
amid our screams
the world had come apart,
right at the seams?