Then We Rose Up from Dust and Ashes

We the wasted vagrants woke the dawn

We showed the morning where to sit

We lay with rain and fathered fog

We whose womb gave birth to ice

We who mothered frost from night

We did things that never happened

Or were said could never happen

Or appeared to never happen

Or ought not to ever happen

We untethered wild clouds
We cut channels for the downpour

We let loose the weight of waters
We cleared the way for thunderous rivers

We the wind that froze the ocean

We sacked the storehouse stole the hail

We pillaged hell and trod the paths of heat

We put wisdom in the darkness

We planted truth in empty cisterns

We who gave the horse her strength

We corralled the zodiac

We slipped a noose around its tongue

We gave a constellation wings

We released the Pleiades

We unhooked Orion’s belt

We who dwelt in final hours

We fed the months of pregnant days

We brought their offspring to the birth

We watched them grow and thrive and die

We fed vultures we fed crows and flies