The Pit and the Pandemic

Old rings of summers past turn to ash
the carbon captured in arboreal growth
released in the nocturnal combustion. 

We sit, our present warmed by burning past
the mercury falling in nightside dark
huddling closer, warming at the burning pit.

As the god of war glows in orange attire
chasing the lunar movement across skies dusked and patterned by silver cloud.  

The babe finds comfort in his mother's lapasking sleepy questions of planetary wonder   
the cosmic movements of Armstrong's bowels.

As we struggle to adapt to the world as 
we don't know it, the future is a void filled with fear for those who are cursed with memory. 

The stars stud the night and flames die to ember
cycles light and dark pass through night and day
while past, present, and future remain unknown.

Ciaran Burke