The father is alive, alert.
The mother—doctors say—is too.
But not the Skylark: it is wrecked.
A nameless something else was killed.
"The children," we regret, "are dead."
And grandpa? Grandma? "Too," they said.
But flowers, pastries, hats...intact.
The onyx colored dress, untorn.
The causes here remain unknown.
Although the bones are red,
and smoke has spread,
beyond the dark I see
that serrated skyline,
with same array of peaks—
but now to me they seem
exact and bleak.
But life ignores our pleas.
So sway, the willow trees;
go on, the roads, as laid;
the Earth, as cold and gray.
While it spins and revolves,
creatures evolve and learn,
and skies around it burn
and spit, the Earth's no more
a pit. But still portend,
spoken words, and express;
observed are facts, they're named
and claimed; machines are made;
money produced and paid;
memories form then fade;
poems are measured and penned;
Yet life‒my own‒can't be,
ever again the same.
