from Jeffrey O'Malley: attending childhood

june could be cool before the stacks collapsed,

the fires that feed us burned,

so that the birch whispered its inscrutable infancy

as leaves combusted in sacrifice

before cathode rays and

the perception of ants' order betrayed

a cosmic vision whose hierarchies of angels

would gasp at my own dereliction of edifices my ancestors 

clawed to secure, fading from memory,

remorseless as static to dry dust and

the complicity of savage fire.