watch out for them critters

This particular apocalypse is really testing my theory 
that everything has happened before. There’s a clown 
nose on it. I am incredulous that we are fucking this up
so badly, that we are pretending we don’t owe each other 
everything. Pretending the sodium and potassium 
we borrowed from rocks isn’t the only thing keeping us 
from dissolving back into seawater. We are acting 
like we don’t know how. As if the situation is complicated. 
As if we can no longer associate ourselves. 

I often wonder who was standing in this exact spot 
before my white ass showed up. What joke 
they were laughing at. Who they were missing, 
which god they were cursing. Whether they, too, 
dreamed of standing waist-deep in a pool 
of clear water, an endless stream of baby turtles 
swimming out of their pockets. Whether they, too, 
dreamed about a flood washing their brothers 
into the sea. At some point, they stopped hunting
the white tail deer. They put on a whole lot of blankets 
and sat very close to the fire. At some point, 
they had their last meal. 

When my pawpaw was near the end of his lucidity
he’d tell his loved ones upon their departure, 
“Watch out for them critters.” This man lived in New Orleans
his entire life. He killed rats with a steam hose at the soap factory,
washed their melted bodies down the drain with the tallow
and the sweat. The last time he left the city was to flee
Hurricane Katrina, only for her to follow him
for a hundred miles, grandfather pine trees falling like empires.
He had been an athlete until he lost his wind, 
first to sadness, then to emphysema. Satellite TV 
in a double-wide recliner, a toy poodle on either side. Swollen feet 
propped above a cold tile floor. The stillness that arrives 
when there is a critical mass of unspeakable hurt. 
What did he know about them critters? 
I keep looking around as if someone is going to give me the answer.