Alys Willman
There are more than 200 hypotheses
about the fall of Rome. This is certain:
from 536 to 537 AD a spasm of volcanic
activity darkened the sun. “We marvel
to see no shadows of our bodies at noon,”
wrote the politician Cassiodorus.
Winter passed without tempests,
spring without softness, summer without
heat. Wheat stunted in the ground.
Bushes withdrew berries. Rats
roamed the sewers and swamps.
Plagues smuggled along trade routes
from green Britain to burning
Sahara. In my garden a cardinal
scratches at the strawberry patch,
fruit green on the vine. Squirrels ration
what they hoarded all winter.
Children ask what cannot be
answered. I dream of a tall, tall pine,
its barren outline inked against grey
sky, roped at the top. You on one side,
holding an end, I with the other. We
breathe, heave to take it down.
Death, I say. The end of the world.
No, you say. It is only the work.
We are doing it together. The creak
and moan, the inevitable fall.
Alys Willman
Alys Willman writes poetry because it’s the only way she can make sense of this crazy world. Poetry does not pay the bills, so she is also a feminist economist. And just in case money becomes irrelevant one day, she and her family manage an urban homestead in Athens, Georgia, where they keep bees, raise chickens and grow vegetables. She is the co-author of several non-fiction books including: Violence in the City (World Bank 2011), Societal Dynamics and Fragility (World Bank 2012) and Sex Work Matters (Zed Books 2013). Her poetry has appeared in Salt Hill Journal, District Lit and Tempered Runes, and she has published a chapbook, Even the Dress is Smoke. Alys also writes songs and performs with the band After the Flood. They have one album (2016).