Apollo, Remember?

Every day there’s a morning
I wonder how long it will be
before we damage the sun so much
it will refuse to show up, but it seems
we aren’t venomous enough
for that just yet.

Did the earth pretty well in,
tossed some junk on moon and Mars,
left a few things adrift to crash
where they may, if ever. Maybe the sun
takes no position on all that; maybe it’s
too big to be bullied, but somehow

I suspect we’ll try. It’s in our nature.
Someone’s going to try it. They
will wake up one day, point at the sky,
say, “Next. I got next,” and ball up
their fists and go to war against the sun.
The sun will flick us off like lint.

We won’t know when to wake up
on those first days. We’ll sleep through it
until it gets cold and we starve. The sun
won’t show up again till then and it will say,
“Apollo, remember? Huitzilopochtli, Ra,
Mithras, Inti — you forgot, and you found out.”