If Milton Fife lived off generic brands

He was like any other guy from here

Wherever here might be, but his commands

Were closer to Jovita and the near

Stretch of the Stuck than the Puyallup sands

Or far from where the headwaters appear

To run as white in name as through the lands

They carved in lava gullies from Rainier.

Evacuation warnings decorate

The valley like a joke exaggerates

Unlikelihood as if it is a fate

Determined in advance to celebrate

A Revelations style of rendezvous

Of inundations wet yet barbecued.

Although an atheist by preference

Fife had a hankering for Biblical

Disasters on a scale of pestilence

To plague a land in metaphysical

Conundrums to inspire reverence

In fools who thrilled a guy so cynical

As one who would exploit a deference

Just like the Pope in ecumenical

Pronouncements of the certainty of doom.

Not to exclude the lunatics of gloom

Those fundamentalists who would assume

The rapture will release their souls to bloom

When Armaggedon gives the heaven-sent

A tenement up on the firmament.


Doug Nufer is our Poet in Residence for May.

Previously: I Who Have Satin, Pocket Pal Bromides Attributed to Celebrities, and Teen Angels.