The world had waged its final solution
Leaving a legacy of death upon all living things
A wrack of nuclear attacks to its
mutually assured destruction

A room which held them safe from the savage storm
Soon became sours only hours after
But then the extreme silence set in
Like waiting for the executioner'song

Speaking volumes from the pace
Of their tell-tale hearts
All could hear the thumping drums
Beat their tunes in a darkened room

They awoke to the day of their departure
Stubbornly, the hatch finally lifted as the man pushed
Deep ash covered the lid to their warm womb
Where terror had waned to worry then a wish

The man peered, eyes glazed staring into the glaring gloom
All around a great gray beach of pyroclastic ash
Conscious to color, now extinct, in an achromatic world
Becoming numb in the sameness of such sights and silence

Bereaved of their brittle branches from the fire
Pines appeared as big black toothpicks
The heavier hardwoods held out their baked black limbs
Seeming to beckon to their God praying for rain from clouds
No longer able to flush the pain from their death

The sky seemed to be a bleak sea
The clouds rolling through a liquid lead sky
Combing the clouds with ash which formed a shroud
Now surrounding the Earth - Or did it?

Fine flakes of ashen snow were steadily falling
Each rocking back and forth like a feather
In a windless silent world
A scene from a surreal reel of a Wes Craven film
Knowing soon was that gratuitous sudden shock

Though it was summer the bitter cold still air stung
Like tiny bees defending a hive that no longer existed
The slake gray flakes of snow fell without that knowing glow
Lost to the contaminates contained within

The food was all gone and the water would be
The man, wife and child set out
It was time to leave, to look, and to hope
However, he knew what lie ahead

Famished faces, desperate to feed
Tongues swollen from a thirst so strong
Speech impossible, driving the amygdalate mind
To drink – anything
To eat - anything

They were the walking dead in a horror film
This was a colorless world of wire and crepe
The man held close his hidden pistol
It held three bullets
-Just in case

11/24/2009

Author's Note: My humble bow to the Pulitzer Prize winning book I just completed, "The Road", by Cormac McCarthy.

Posted on 11/24/2009
Copyright © 2026 Tony Whitaker