Sirens.
Shoulders hunched, Parisians line the streets.
Mothers kissing daughters, chest-swells of relief
Thankful it was not their daughter, thankful it was not their —
Sun to their backs, neither East nor West.
Three shots ring out.

Sail on, sail on.

Three shots ring out.
From earth to earth again,
The hands move swift and fold the flag
The hands move swift and find their mark
Polished wood against skin, the soil speaks,
“Be still, child, you’re coming home.”
They tell you in the baby books, you know,
That it’s dangerous to leave an infant sleeping on its back,
But there is nothing left to harm this child.
She sleeps, back against the wood, chest towards the sky
In the carriage of stillness and quiet,
She sleeps in the chest of the other Mother now.

Bodies shuffling, the crowd draws pause
Silenced by the thunder, hushed by the
Sirens.

Three shots ring out and startles the herd.
Blood-panicked eyes, rapturous cries –
“Liberté, equalité, fraternité.”
Three words but one body,
She’s heard across the sea.
Carrying more weight than lead, she rises.
Atlas-shoulders pulled back, wings outstretched
She catches the glint of Sol, as she flies transatlantic,
“Carry me, brother,” she says to the sun.
The great flame dips behind Big Sur, and she, the trinity,
Carries her message across the continent,
“Liberté, equalité, fraternité!”

As all children are taught,
What falls in the west, ascends in the east
But today, the darkness clings to the chariot,
Unseen tendrils tear at the yokes,
Wide-eyed horses strain and groan against the weight
And for a moment the world holds its breath,
Unsure if the sun will raise its orange crest above the horizon,
Disbelieving that the city can ever emerge from its sublunar veil,
That laughs can still be laughed,
That the earth has not been dislodged from its course
Cast away from its orbit,
And left to freeze and burn in the great vacuum.

Blood runs thicker than water,
But is vapor in the shadow of ink.
The chariot emerges.
With the dawn at the heels of Helios,
The perennial hammer-blows of the pen strike against paper.
Breathing new life into infant lungs with each breathless stroke,
They lift the children from the kingdom of this earth.

Sail on, sail on.