Dawn

Let her tend to the old fires, then,
over a steaming cup of ash.
The crematorium smoke rises
to muted, pilgrim stars
who hold their tongues of ash
and tear the night down
from its vault of sky and smoke.
Each sip, another life gone up in flames

The eye above peers down upon the browning earth
Wotan sheds a tear
a clear, welling sadness from the Great Hall throne
mud-swelled streams bursting at the seams

from the Amazon -- slashed and burned --
the hamadryads say, "We take from her
ringlets of red and gold
shed with our leaves in the fall,
a palimpsest gone to ground, ringlets run through
by stalagmites of ice and heaved soil
come wintertime." They grow weary
under the passage of stars
fed on lies and lives of ash, their harvest
a millstone around their necks
become a road of bare earth,
rutted, and meandering.

Quetzalcoatl, gray and withered from despair
his world long seared to farmland
and the feathered serpent roasted over the fires
of emperors become peasants and warriors, slaves
he excises his own heart and offers it up
as proof of hardship and worthiness to the sun.

(Originally published online in the now-defunct Basement Stories, issue 4, October 2011)