Providence

In disaster and war movies

the protagonist (Queen) and her immediate circle

are protected from anonymous death. They may die (one by one or all at once)

but someone at least grieves.

Or the audience is full of glee.

But in Star Wars (for instance)

what about the many hundreds of nameless, faceless soldiers

in body armor and visored helmets, or planetary citizens,

who fall by the dozens or more, like the leaves this rich fall. I think

no one thinks

how one of them may have had her first lover the night before

and one may be leaving behind two sons he read to last night

and loved with all his heart.

Neither belief in God nor being a god entertained

can explain or forgive this oversight.

Ah, how sweet

the film in which no actor dies or if they do

it's from their own disease or golden age.

People grieve for the soul that left

and celebrate the soul that flew.

I was in Providence for a conference,

a town I had thought insignificant, not a city to be considered

a city in flight. But that night they lit

one hundred bonfires in the river running up through the streets and the

      face of every girl and woman with her lover

by firelight was beautiful.

Had the city been nuked

by a terrorist or rogue nation I would not have minded dying there,

with them, that night. It is possible

to be several million strong

and every homeless man with a singing voice belong.