Adaptation

Adaptation

Then one morning everything was glass:
Glass houses, glass fences,
Glass streets, glass box springs
And glass mattresses, glass sinks.
People cautiously folded back
Glass sheets and glass bedspreads,
Slid gingerly out of glass beds,
Maneuvered around glass throw rugs—
Could see through to the glass apartments below,
Stare up to the glass apartments overhead.
Out of glass closets they quickly
Pulled their clothes, concealing a nakedness
That would have been pathetically private
Except for all of the sudden glass. Children
Did not run; cats waited unsure
On the thoughtless glass window ledges.
No one could imagine how fragile
Anything might now be. Some one
Tentatively opened a glass door, licked the air
As though in its mixed pheromones
There would be an answer. Water still ran
In glass pipes and I was brushing my teeth
When, from somewhere, there was the persnickety rumble,
The petty child's malicious rumor:
The formal introduction of breakage.