Washington's Tears

One
by one
by one by one
by far too many
slopes of stone and steel
fill the sheltered basin.
They defile broken gravel,
and eclipse the illuminated pools of stilled water,
while out into space,
they stretch until disappearing from sight,
like an airplane shrinking
smaller and smaller
before devoured by the hungry horizon.
A maze of names
turns to a graveyard of family
friends
and lovers,
whose eyes witnessed their final blast,
and a decade later,
their bones are nothing more than tree limbs,
shaking
in dusk’s fragile gale.