We are all tired and tried, having been unspooled
for two long years, our thread moving farther from us, faster

than we can keep up, weary and worn, far from our homes,
refugees of hope, we cup our candle flames.

So I’ve a roof though, and rooms, full of baggage
from my travels, memorabilia and tokens from the continents

of Fear, Failure, Desperation, Anger, Doubt.
I dump them in closets and close my eyes. I can not forget.

How often I cry, and all the while the world floods and burns,
whole nations swallowed, whole forests

on fire, whole neighborhoods burying their people,
and silence follows.

As it is I’d say to hell with it, as we are all surely arriving
by luxury yacht, the waters black, the shores hot,

the brimstone readying its elegy, the diggers
lazed upon their shovels, having spent eternity preparing.

We have displaced our hearts. Those organs, aimless and
burdened, seeking their red rivers where once

they free traded with the mind, passing golden love
and receiving glorious lights. It was a kingdom.

I have been unmoored, and out I go,
my hardened back the gondola of my throe, abreast

with the dying, headlong into the vastness
of years that will not end,

years, that rain ash, crash dreams, divide peoples and
cast the children into Fate’s hands;

us, we wash ours. They are clean, undaunted
by what we hath wrought.