Essential Work

Cloud
shapes
shake like
tattered flags
heavens shiver, swell
as safety shifts without a sound

if
we
knew life
would come to
this would we have asked
for the work of seeing each soul,
the poor, the anxious, those without a hope to help them
hold onto self if fear won't leave.
We try to breathe through
danger but
what we
see
is

eyes darting to the spume of trees
each breath too ragged
every hour
an old
sad
tune.