We kept building our steeples higher until
emissions streamed to thousands of miles away,
but distant lakes spit up frogspawn & fish,
so we built our steeples higher until —
though at first we couldn’t tell — emissions
circled the globe to snow & rain
on us. So we built our steeples higher,
through mackerel clouds, the last chains
of food. Instead, we should have dug a hole
like a cathedral in the earth, receptacle for all
preternatural desire. Adream, we’ll kneel
in pews there: flowers of stained glass above us
& censers swinging by, a choir advertising wind
tearing over our steeples higher & higher.
—William Heyen
