Musings on the First Snow

The Inca Empire relied on mummies to make their wars,
The strength of spirit preserved in bodies proved invincible.
Opposing tribes who placed their bones on sacred mountains
Awoke to find the Incan mummies in their place, and gave their ghosts.
The Inca kings would never leave their legacies for sons,
They held on, & made them earn new lands of their own within the one.
And when the droughts came they would entomb their finest children
Alive within the mountains, fed herbs that would preserve them.

So it is, today, with those we call celebrities,
The chosen from among us are entombed for us to worship.
In every field of human skill we laurel our immortals
To sing or sling a ball for all our garlands and our cheers
As we sit like tone-deaf cripples on our couches dreaming we
Could somehow be like them if only the breaks had come our way.
The pantheon of kings and queens looks on from mausoleums
That each of us keeps lit in a corner of our living rooms.

Meanwhile, a billion sacred shapes have fallen from the sky,
Each one a seed to plant unique geometries of healing,
Who've come at night to change the way the face of Earth appears
And, as boots merge with crystal, the way it sounds, the way it feels.
Everything familiar's now touched with a holy white robe
That overhangs with silence all the things we used to know.
Let's stop before this beauty, for it's all we'll see of us
Transforming and invisible, the blessings of the endless.