A speaker goes looking for peace in the natural world and finds that anxiety follows. The dried-up pool at the top of the watershed was a place to rest his eyes away from the doom-scroll of screens, and now it is gone. Each scene that follows starts with a small pleasure, then slides into worry. Pollinators buzz in the garden, but he thinks of the vanishing butterflies. A distant thunderstorm flickers silently over the ridge, but he remembers an article about monster storms. Even the comet he searches for is barely visible, compared to a dead midge smeared on a screen.
The mood is quiet, uneasy and tired. The title, "Augury," points to reading signs of what's coming, and the speaker keeps finding bad ones. The short verse pieces sharpen this: cracks in the mud, "100% chance of chaos," like a grim weather forecast. The last one, with its rain sound and clumsy typing, suggests nature and technology have blurred together in his mind.