"Cosmology with Hedgehogs"

This morning, the traffic light at the major
intersection's out, just in time for rush hour;
the upper third of the hackberry's fallen
and blocks the park walkway, ripped
branches and torn leaves scattered around;
a single worn hightop sneaker rests in the dent
on a streetparked Lexus; the battered grocery cart
lies on its side on the sandbar by the bridge.

In the thin hours of night, hedgehogs had uncurled
from the minds' dim recesses, stretched, and emerged
by ones and twos, then drawn, gathered into platoons,
squadrons, brigades, phalanxes -- moving together
through the dark, silent, determined, purposive.

Graffiti appear on underpasses and the doors
of boxcars; the carcass of a bicycle stripped
of wheels, seat, and handlebars blocks
the boat ramp; a pair of one-legged jeans
sprawls on the bus-stop bench; the mockingbird's
nest fallen from the elm, its eggs cracked.

By dawn, all these minor maleficencies
are in place, to make us question whatever
we try to believe.