Destiny is Memory

- Tia Ballantine

After bombs remove oil-stained pavement, bricks,
and what’s left of the garden wall, Eve finds
a shoelace and three plastic cups designed
to look like Mickey Mouse. Under thick black
ash, a patch of blue. In for the long haul –
he’d say, shoulder pressed to hers, hands resting
on her thigh, breath collapsed. They watched western
skies go gray. Now, out of clouds, books fall:
Complete Milton lands near The Silent Clowns.
Shakespeare breaks its spine against the carcass
of the kitchen sink. Pages flutter past
flame . . . kin with ken and kind with kind confound
disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny.
A fire burns the last remaining tree.

from: Poets Against the War, Sam Hamill, Sally Anderson, et al, ed.
{BackStory}