Titans Under Amber Haze

                                              Elegy Beneath the Amber Sky

Morning awoke in garments not its own;
The faithful blue had yielded to the flame.
A golden veil lay softly over stone,
And every tower seemed to speak its name.

The ash had climbed these streets of steel and glass,
And had descended on the thriving trees;
Yet from the pine-clad North, as it passed,
Unhealthy matter came with the summer breeze.

How strange that woods no city eye had known,
Whose ancient roots drank other rains than ours,
Should stain the light that crowned our fields of stone,
And dim the proud ascent of glass and towers.

The sun still shone, but gentled by the air,
Its ardent face subdued to quiet gold;
It seemed less ruler of the heavens there
Than witness to a grief too vast to hold.

What unseen thread binds forest, wind, and town,
That one far wound can alter all the sky?
Whose hand can say where mourning settles down,
Or measure the miles through which the tears fly?

Yet wind remembers neither crown nor wall;
It keeps no map of kingdom, field, or sea.
Whatever grief befalls, befalls us all,
For earth is larger than we choose to see.

The amber day will pass. The blue return.
The towers will reclaim the light they knew.
But hearts once taught how distant forests burn
Will never wholly lose that altered view.