Sky Burial

Ethel, what's a brother for?

Your hollow-pointed DNA encapsulated all the words you ever spoke
to free yourself, the final tine on fortune's spinning wheel.
Your Remington translated touch, projecting tinny talk of heavy metals
on its QWERTY-keyed machinery. Your pressure patted carbon black
on blades of silent shudders, smearing tethered, taloned triumphs
over hemispheres as your Antenna fed you David's lines.

Your burning blood met Cold War gazes. Salem-spirited, they stood
around the bloc and pooled the red as Brother Greenglass
rescued Ruth. Imploded courts revealed the hidden seams -- the stuffing
stank of you as he unzipped the smoldered skin
and watched her crisply step away. A button eye popped to the floor
from which your tear would never fall.

You were Japan and the Enola Gay delivered you -- and Julius, too,
long after you sent words of Boys and Men to those who shook
the Russians' hands. Two rotting boxes, deeply buried, held your brother's
wooden love, preserving thicker red than any fleeting sunset
on Manhattan, just a mockery of burial at sky. The peaceful monk
fed brethren flesh and bones to buzzards, sating hungers of a country
with your quiet sacrifice.

You might have seen the first Corvette and gotten wind of Disney's dream,
but when you left, you changed the world. And still, your ciphers
sit in crypts, unsolved, in Arlington. They echo of Venona --
truths and venoms shake the scales as we assess a human's worth.