Consider the delicacy
by which the news
must have been conveyed.
Whole families bereft,
left only with mystery.
How can faith answer
the questions asked
by the remains? If you live
the questions,
answers aren’t
the point.
The earth swallows
us whole and spits
out the pits,
leaving maps
to disillusion
traced on the surface
of our aging skin.
Something happened here
on the way someplace
expecting,
everyone willfully
expecting,
forgetting
again and over again
anything can happen,
and it will,
as it does,
as it did —
whatever awful thing
it may have been
that happened
here when no
one was looking.
We are mere
toys to time
playing us
with the twisted glee
of a spoiled child
out of history
nurtured full grown
into that mass murderer
only a knowing mother
could cruelly bear
and abandon to whim.
I’ll leave it to you
to wonder
who drove us here
and why there
is no next
after the burned out husks
of all of our efforts
are uncovered
by autumn’s inclimate
streetlight lullabies
in the rain
pouring down foliage
in a rush
to cover the evidence.
Consider the tact,
consider the quiet
conveyance of
horror,
the blunt force
of the already inevitable,
the unstoppable
truth
that there was nothing
anyone
could have done.
