Ash falls like hellborn confetti
from skies milky with mistakes
generations of mistakes and we are
the meat curing in this smokehouse while winds
roam rough through hard canyons,
rogue bands of mercenaries, pitiless.

Merchants of resentment peddle their
tinny wares to the ready, all spongy and moony
as they take their shiny trinkets of fool’s gold
to Our Lady of Perpetual Grievance, this congregation
of small and shuttered hearts, their quicksilver eyes ecstatic
with visions of end days.

Where are the purifying showers of April,
the white linens drying in the backyard sun,
the picnics of summer with watermelon-stained faces?
Where are the small and beautiful things?