The sky is burning,

the last light eclipsed by the night
and we stop and stare like fools at its blaze,
not seeing within this gaze possibility falling
though our hands like snowflakes in a season
that has kept captive the summer.

The sky is burning

while we travel in taxis, all of us
back-seat partakers being driven down roads
we know not where they lead as our minds run
tattered threads along all the tracks we wanted to press
with our own print but we cannot choose a direction
like a snowflake cannot control its pattern.

The sky is burning
with a fine filigree of fire and ice,
with thoughts we try to catch hold of but flames
are ever changing as no snowflake is ever the same
and we take hold of other dreams others dreamt of
in other beds, under other skies blazing
through futile snowstorms and we melt,

like a snowflake
in the dry heat of an early autumn.

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly