That Strange September Day

I was young- nearly twenty- the day innocence became ill. I remember the funeral well that ninth month. As the sunlight shattered another night, I awoke in a dim lit room, silenced by a strange sunrise as it splayed across the earth, then darkened in the most somber and eeriest gloom. Ashes were scattered over the sea, beyond the hills, into the valleys, hurdling ocean waves, drifting across isles, then settling into unknown graves. The thin-lipped mistress shed no tears from faraway shores, her saw-toothed, jagged edges cutting deep the wagging tongues, swaggering into the Eagle's beak. Her colorless face, with black eyes bored into souls with a craven heart, stone cold and set- cast deeper than the wounded stars and bleeding stripes, flying at half mast. We sat huddled, wrapped in gray shawls, glum and sullen- watching the smoke curling upward toward the angels who were stepping out of a mystical fog dove wings spread wide, reaching down to lift up all who had fallen.