May your mothers find you whole. May the sky hold
your bodies unbroken as the light before the flood.
May our makers never demand we row out
beyond the deluge. May their every promise
hold. May moonlight replace the flash and howl
of the alarms. May the water tenders sluice the fires
to mud and mist before nightfall, may the switchboard
hold the calls. May the cranes hollow their burrows
in the wet earth, may their hooks graze the loose
fists of your ribcage. May they lift your fingers
gentle as the hands of your mothers. May the coroners
recover the horned rungs of your vertebrae whole
and not scattered here in the oil slick, buried
there in the singed grasslands. May they ladder you
away like the strands of DNA helixed to arrest
dissolution, may they wind you back to your separate
bodies. May the dome of heaven refit the arced
continents of your skulls, may your bones find their way
out of evidence. May your mothers slack your hold
may they gather your knuckles loosed from the tusk
handles and bury your knives clean. May you unslash
his throat. May your mothers cut you from this earth
whole. May we wake to any given morning anywhere
but here in this burning field, extinguished and whole.