The Wake

We walk down streets
that bear mounds of ash

and wonder why we can’t see our feet,
or the black hole at the center of the town of ash.

It’s not as though we are strangers
to the mound of ash

spread in its ways, though at times I wonder why so
many distance themselves from these mounds of ash.

These days are nothing but the same feet walking between beams
coasting by houses and buildings standing stripped of their walls—to ash,

with no question or qualm,
and a precipitant [Bird] between the floorboards and the ivy.