The women were mean, despairingly crying, as they clung
to the coffin for a body light as air.
Dogs lapped their tears like they were anti-freeze
and cowered under abject slaps transferred.
The phones lit up with vitriol, in hopes the clouds would stay,
the spell could not be broken today like bread
As if they could be fed. For it was not, to them, love,
something that fell within their purview,
It was other, it was hate, it was worthy of the raw
discontent they'd tried with parasols to hide
For millennia it seemed: their papery smiles
betrayed a fear that all was as it appeared,
That the man had no redeeming acts, the earth
no cause for grace, no heaven save the rending,
Where all that lived must die, the easier to sweep away;
creation's in the clean-up, that same old tell-tale story
As the one that murderers say, at bedtime to their grandkids
when they stamp a kiss of dreams on warm foreheads.
