I offer a salute To your ruthless endurance Borrowed canvas, fruitless contributions stunting evolution Do I have the right to mourn for the Death of what was never mine? What moves a hand to action? Smothering lumens of light? Take me back to morning When nothing fair was dying My edifice reaches Arrogant, into the night sky Doomed to wither I know now my tongue was stretched To taste clouds, to curse the soil Cast sparks into the wind Pray for distance I swore alliance with the morrow and its cultivation To be formidable is worth the transitory agony Irrational, deadened, insatiable Acid in my chest simmers like the birch And puckers the magnolias Drift away As the anchor resists the undertow To settle its rust amongst the basalt We remain naive to the subduction The ire that forged our stability