Sonnet 6

sonnet 6

when ashes line the wayside, angels stand,
all blue-eyed beauties, porcelain and proud;
they crumble autumn's lives between their hands   
and scatter them on wind to form earth's shroud.

the faithful cry in agony for aid;
they cannot live much longer as they are --
all shattered, with no answers when they prayed
to gods and angels, near and yet so far.

with wish to die, the faithful must all gaze
upon their world, tear-watered, sown with salt;
they see the fires, see the lives ablaze
with suffocating sin, with vice, with fault.

beware the claws concealed on angels' wings:
the catastrophal dream, death's bitter sting.