ten years from now

newsprint sprouts from the field
like cabbage-- a speckling 
of black & white across
the swathe of earth that used 
to burst with soybeans.
we don't use words
like "terrible" "horrible" & "atrocity"
anymore because they've become
common words for mundane things.
i spilled the salt - how terrible
she has a cold - horrible
they got a paper cut - an atrocity
the newspapers are from 
ten years from now but only 
one page at a time--
fragments of articles,
pieces of want ads & covers 
out of context. the town's newspaper
stopped printing years ago--
none of these stories have a writer
so the townspeople assume 
it's God. i like to think that 
it might be a man who lives
underneath the earth,
working roots like the peddles 
of an old sewing machine. he would
stand on his head under there.
how he knows the future though,
i'm not sure about. the truth is
that he might not even really know 
that future-- he might just 
be writing whatever comes into 
his head. parents advise children
not to pick the leaves of newsprint
& grandparents advise their 
grown children not to either 
& yet somehow everyone ends up
in the field together, 
on their knees picking through 
the print & reading page 
after page out of order 
& context. none of it makes sense
to anyone but each pretends
like they understand. they look for
obituaries out of fear of
finding their own or a love ones. 
i find one for a neighbor 
three blocks over & i throw it out
because i didn't want 
to know that. ten years is a long time.
the holy people say to ignore
the newsprint field-- to go on
with your lives & don't think
of ten the wildness of ten years 
from now but just like everyone else
i see them in the field
sifting through the pages. in the winds 
the pages rustle 
& sometimes blow away.
tumble down side streets where they mix
with old newspapers where they form
stories that switch from past 
to future & back again. when i die 
i hope they wrap each of my bones
in newspaper just like 
how the thrift store wraps up 
bowls when you buy them-- one pages 
around each object-- 
a kind of swaddling. out in the field 
at night all the words are blurry
in the dark. i pick pages
& smash them into balls.
the headlines are legible 
by the light the half-blink moon
& they talk of things that are 
mostly horrible or terrible 
or atrocities. no one talks about 
the newspapers words 
because it's ten years away &
the they might not 
even be right. i consider taking
my lighter & burning the field.
it's selfish, i know, but 
someone has to, so i do. 
i wait till the tired cob of night
& dip my flame in between 
a knot of pages. it's a horrible 
terrible atrocity to 
see the whole thing burn
knowing it was you who caused it.
in the people everyone
will probably pick through the ash
hoping to find something--
a word or two.