Mourning

Morning calls like a time of prayer
Billowy fog hugging the reticent horizon
Insistent on remaining unsheathed

What abominations preceded this calm
What sins might have been abetted
By a complicit canopy of stars

Live not in the past, we are told
Savor the present
Allow your future to unfold

Alas, a thousand scars and would-be starlets
Threaded within this guile cloth of dawn
Their present and future —already gone

Photo by Alina de Albergaria
Santa Barbara, 2021