::: SKIDROW PENTHOUSE :::

A canister of sunlight rests on a shelf
in a vault beneath the coldest
point on Earth
next to the moths pressed
inside a book whose text
is a postscript to the promised land.
Ice from a diminishing glacier

lies on a bed of stars and velvet
in a box under protection
of a century’s darkness.
Here are the seeds of good intentions
and the chemicals that challenged them
separated finally, and here
is the wire

that once looped around
the tibia of an animal
whose extinction qualified it for a place
in a museum above ground
during the time of plenty. Here are frozen
spores and frozen hearts

locked away in safes with nobody
alive who remembers the combination.
The signposts along the way
leading here are turned
to point back in the direction from which
we come with mementoes

to be stored. Can we get there in time?
Will there be room for the pictures
we took of the birds? Will their tape recorded
songs survive underground
where everything is stored
ten degrees below
the freezing point of money?

David Chorlton