The Ballad of Allison Loan

She was some kind of regent
like an orphanage queen;
her blessings had been overcast.
They took her away
in a wagon ash-gray
and a janitor emptied her past.

For seventeen years
she amassed birthday candles
until on a midsummer's night:
a god with a hammer
and one eye for cold steel
layed her out with a peregrine light.

I met her in Texas
in bars rimmed with salt;
I nursed back her last dying coal.
There were tinfoil stars
in the heavenly vault
but none of them paid at the pole.

Where Thursday's wind took her
I know second-hand;
where the alley dogs hunch in the rain.
Some stone carver paying
his granddaughter's rent
will chip out her final refrain.