A SNUFF POEM
As unstoppable self-flensing fruit, arrogance
has snuffed out life, embroiled dismemberment
in dust, splayed iron girders soft on footpaths
too rumpled to dig through for lost carcasses.
Twice in thunder, and again, again, again,
replayed a million million billion times that
curved flight making me lean in my seat
and impact, repeated frame by flickering flame.
Born of the bloody grit of desert war,
this smoke-screened tragedy (hard-heart
you see that there is death in this) winged
to visit sudden devastation on the world.
Thundered past as quickly as the boarding pass
that wandered through my hands slow in prayer,
and I was gone like Jonathon Seagull through a cliff
onto another plane, through another building's face.
-Averil bones