Through the window was the concrete parking lot. Cars
came and went as if the drivers couldn’t decide

whether to stay or go. She didn’t belong here, wanted
her Lay-z-boy and trailer, wanted her legs to hold her up.

The diaper made her mad. She flipped the television control,
looking for the weather, finding Nightly News and the angry wave 

sweeping 500 miles per hour across Japan’s coast,
swallowing houses, flipping boats over like bars of soap.

Without her glasses, it all looked blurry, as if someone
had wiped a hand across a wet painting, smeared 

it all to brown, the color of shitty diapers. She couldn’t
see clearly enough to wonder about the people who must 

have only had seconds to realize their own forecast,
the ocean rising up as if the world was quickly tilted,

death rushing toward them like a train. She had lived on
this earth so long, 94 winters, 94 summers. She wondered

if it was her time, said she had other plans, but who is
in control, after all? The sun shone brightly and nothing

had changed really, except that maybe this was it, maybe
it was the beginning of the end, maybe right then 

something began rolling quietly across the desert.