Naked to the Sun: Dark Visions of Apocalypse

By Michael R. Collings

NAKED TO THE SUN is a collection of Collings’ early science fiction and fantasy verse, including more than 50 poems, broken into four sections: "The World and Time"; "In the Shadow of the Gods"; "Nightmares in Daytime"; and "Apocalypse and Beyond." Among the pieces included are “The Last Pastoral,” nominated for both the Rhysling Award (Science Fiction Poetry Association) and the Nebula Award (Science Fiction Writers of America); and the original version of “Fifth Movement and Final,” finalist for the Rhysling Award. Many of the poems have long been out-of-print and otherwise unavailable.

Wildside Press/Borgo Press, 30 September 2007 [available 10 December 2007]
Trade paperback
$14.99
84 pages.
ISBN-10: 0930261763
ISBN-13: 978-0930261764

Available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Sun-Dark-Visions-Apocalypse/dp/0930261763/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197298891&sr=1-2
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From NAKED TO THE SUN:


          Betrayal

They told me that my cougar was only a child's silly dream;
They told me so--and so--but I had seen
It purring/snarling in grey rocks that grew beyond the aspens
And had rushed back, faint from breath held in suspense
To warn them all.  "Child," my grandmother said,
"There are no cougars here.  They are all dead
Or hidden high above the snowline in caves.  No alarms
Have rung for years down here, close by the farms."
                                        And I believed.

They told me he would heal, that his red blood
Staining rusty flagstones would wash away, would flood
Away as soon as Grandpa sluiced the water
From the irrigation ditch across the lawn.  It was hotter
In the kitchen late that night.  Grandma stoked
The cast-iron stove, boiling water while they broke--
Or tried to break--his fever.  Grandma made my bed
In the attic darkness.  In the morning he was dead.
                                        And I had believed.

They told me that the park was safe--that I could run
There on my way to meet my father as the sun
Sank red.  I saw him coming--and from the brush
Head-high beside me, a German shepherd in a rush
Exploded.  My father yelled--the dog fled
Yipping like a thing in agony.  My father caught my red
Red blood in a paper soda-carton--irrational, insane--
But all I saw was redness and black pain.
                                        They said...they said...they said;
                                        And I believed



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          The Meeting on the Edge of Eternity


I met him at the cross
roads, in a desert flat
just out of Reno.  A chance
meeting poignant with the loss

of a vision.  Wastelands stretched matte
gray, a blessed relief, no dance
of afterburn assaulted eyes
day after day.  He sat

mesquite shaded.  He heard me pant
in the noon shimmer-heat.  Flies
haloed his graying hair (the first
living things, other than himself), enhanced

his other-worldliness.  He squatted on a rise,
three-shrub-crowned, watching a valley cursed
by fatal closeness to humankind.
Mouth drier than thirst, cries

more feral than polite, I burst
into a run, scuttled up the gravel rind
of the skull-smooth hill, tripped on a
coyote corpse, and nursed

a throbbing kneecap as I climbed
the final grade, stopped dead still,
and tried to resurrect my unused voice.
Here was a second of my World-lost kind.

What could I say?  The pill
of shame cut acid-bitter.  Moist
lips quivered but would not speak.  We
stared, he and I, until the evening chill

settled wraithy over the waste
and on the blue radiation-silhouetted peaks
thrusting turquoise fires into the north.
We had made our choice,

his people, mine...choosing in weak
unwisdom.  And our species' worth
was measured in that freedom.  I waited,
hoped and feared that he would speak

to me, the last, together at the birth
of loneliness.  Darkness mated
with the living blue of death,
and I heard him laugh--not mirth

but agony.  The sound grated
to a ragged sand-screed breath
and died.  In its place
a murmur muted

to a sigh: "Life, not death,
was my intent."  His face
glowed, transfigured in the light,
unearthly, passionless in Passion, bereft

of all emotion.  His pace
increased.  The tight,
tense voice wove words again: "As a hen
her chicks, so would I give you place

beneath my wing."  His eyes breathed bright,
as bright almost as the wide-irradiated fen
of nothingness in the distant north.  I glared
into fast-drawing night

and wept--for myself, for the worlds of men.
I had alone survived, I thought--to be paired
with....  But no one sat beneath the skull-shade tree.

I stood alone, the last, and I despaired.