The soccer fields were empty
of children—they filled the schools
But the other hopping things played
and waited to eat or be eaten,
their livelihood
Some mothers worked at home
and filled the necessary spaces between
what is the world and what it should be
and taught our preschoolers manners, and
to tie their shoes
Men and women, with complicated families
or none, went to work
gathered their coffee, put away lunches
and looked at schedules
that would not matter
A slice of each sat in airports
and sighed and heaved their things
into the overhead bin
and watched the flights rise,
to their early end
The world turned
with the same determined pace
into a spin that none could imagine
and none could wish
but some did
Somewhere there are knots
picked and pulled taunt–
tangles of souls relishing each of the dead
and confident we stand of the edge
of an inevitable never
They calculate in chaos theory
how black the day must be
for their peculiar light to shine
and imagine in martyred dreams where
we all will be