The Anthropocene   They’ll find the plastic, thick deposits everywhere, and kids will comb through it to find lighters and blades. The junkyards will be mined for useful metals, all those Fords and Chevies picked apart for lead and steel and screws, the trophies of another time. What happened? they’ll ask, puzzling at the MAGA caps and snowmobiles and fallen bridges, clues to piece together, and the wise among them, the seers, scholars, and poets, will explain the past, but few will listen to their warnings not to venture where dead trees are strung with dead wires, in the deserts where the rains failed while people feasted on their seed corn.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont November 2020