Revision.  From 2016.

Peace in the shrug
as you pull the first two red tomatoes
from your garden only to notice

they’ve been consumed
by bottom rot, at the chagrin
you feel at not catching that

earlier, the casual toss into
the base of the fence, 
the sudden awareness

of the nearly ripe 
cucumber hanging 
on that fence.

Peace in the shrug
at choices made, choices
that failed to pan out, choices

that went south or north or
every direction not on the compass
without an ounce of malice from anyone

involved, at people living lives
that did or did not intersect with 
your own, at the failure 

of will, the utter failure of
all your will — at the memory
of the twenty dollar bill on the ground

at the foot of the pay phone where
you’d just spent your last dime, and that
was thirty years ago; 

you remember it, 
it still pays you 
today.

Peace in the shrug
at the end of this world, end
of order and justice, at the plodding

of the long-awaited Beast,
the pseudo-shambolic walk of the
Giant No, the edible flesh of 

Harmony, the smacking of 
thin jaws around the bones of
All You’ve Held Dear, and now

at the very close of the last snap
of those jaws the silence
of the sunset, and the dawn

beyond your own experience
that will come, that will surely
come even without you.

Peace in the shrug
as you pass, at your last thought
forming around how the seeds 

from the tomatoes you tossed
will grow there in the dirt along the fence 
as long as rain falls and sun shines

next season, with or without you
there to moan, or wail,
or shrug such miracles off

as too little, too late 
when they were never meant 
to feed you.