Fireworks

These fireworks each night,

pointillist flowers, confetti and light,

blooming and wilting in accelerated time-lapse

are making my tired heart collapse:

how they mimic the sounds of war—

it’s the end to one, presumably, that they’re for—

booming like cannons, whistling through the sky

like impotent missiles that nonetheless fly.

I remember hiding in the bunker under

the rhythm of death which I mistook for thunder.

Fireworks are lightning in reverse,

sound before flash, not unlike verse.