“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”

       like the unraveling of life, or death
of a body that gives way to beginnings—sunrise
        of golden hue
        of a tangerine rise
        after a blazing purple set
generating either the booming doom of the day
or twilight silence of lamplight stars

        Pompeii was cast in ash, grainy sand
Phoenix example of demolition
        miniscule particles
        an array of thirty shades
        of thick brown.
anachronistic dust encapsulating a culture eternally
that was so short lived in its own time

        manufacturing new life starts violently for man
a nuclear explosion of passion
        dimming sight
        heightened touch
        culmination of breath
ends in a beginning of a being unknowing
of the first steps it never possessed


Caitlin Donnelly