The Ashes on our Forehead

The ashes on our forehead might be last year’s burned palms.  
Or wildfires - burned Lytton, LA, Athens. 
Or war-blacked cities, Mariupol, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, 
smouldering remains of commerce, purpose, neighbours, love. 
The ashes on our forehead, horror, memory – 
the kilns of Auschwitz, Phnom Penh’s killing fields, 
napalm, charred bones of village, burning child. 

Caught in the sin of the world, in its leg-hold trap, 
gnawing our leg, 
self-consuming, 
burning our home:
making ashes 
even of ourselves.

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