From the Verse Essays of Ivar Benløs: Standing in a Row on the Ocean Floor

Death has been nosing closer
For a couple of years now.
Not own death, not relatives':
That dark sniffing's a given.
No, literally closer
In these sun-struck, quiet lands...
The woman who froze to death

On the steps of her front porch,
The couple watching TV
One night in the nearest town,
Crushed by a massive rock slide,
The woman one town over
Murdered by her gardener,
Who fled in her car, torched it

Not far from our house, and ran
Into the canyons that hid
Outlaw bank robbers, Mormon
Polygamists, and so forth
A century-plus ago,
But that bought him just a day.
The lovely world disappears

From your side any moment
Now, whether you deserved it
Or never in a million
Years. Sun piles a hot gold hoard
Of secrets on the slowly
Cracking rocks over your head,
Your sleepy village. All gone.