No One Owned The Hour

–for Heather Heyer

no one owned the hour
no one saw the land
turn into water or the sky
offer its light
to the last door of morning

no one remembered
when men & women
forgot what it was
to be men & women
who remembered

that time was before memory
& before memory no one
thought anything
the grass suffered & bled
through one sublimation
of dignity after another

no one owned the hour
when crushed you rose
through those palaces
of forgetting drawing
your blue voice behind you
into swelling grief into
re-encapsulation of the word

there was blood
in that lightness where you were
& others were shouting
& burning as everyone had
before then you fell a dark
red mouth was opening

& it spoke a syllable we could
hear the wind it startled

Edward Walker is a writer and teacher at Johnston Senior High School. His work has been published in several journals, most recently The Georgetown Review.