I offer a salute
To your ruthless endurance

Borrowed canvas, fruitless contributions stunting evolution
Do I have the right to mourn for the
Death of what was never mine?

What moves a hand to action?
Smothering lumens of light?
Take me back to morning
When nothing fair was dying

My edifice reaches
Arrogant, into the night sky
Doomed to wither

I know now my tongue was stretched
To taste clouds, to curse the soil
Cast sparks into the wind
Pray for distance

I swore alliance with the morrow and its cultivation
To be formidable is worth the transitory agony

Irrational, deadened, insatiable
Acid in my chest simmers like the birch
And puckers the magnolias
Drift away

As the anchor resists the undertow
To settle its rust amongst the basalt
We remain naive to the subduction
The ire that forged our stability