Engineers

Engineers know

to build in redundancies

when lives depend

not necessarily exact replicas of the primary unit

but systems whose secondary function

is to carry the load when a primary system

fails.

        The principle applies

to all organisms and the inanimate

objects designed to support them.

But the sun

and the rock

that is earth

need no redundancies.

Burning, cooling

one

of each, they disintegrate

without feeling

for the mantle or the planets.

Some individuals

may, it turns out, be irreplaceable.

There is not always another girl singer

this one is the only one for us

at this time, while we're alive

in this place with the random weather.

The one singer, leader

the one who interprets God's words

when she is assassinated, terminated, released

we are not released, velocity

registers a mandatory, momentarily momentous

palpitation that is gone

unlike Shakespeare

so far. She

was not the sun.

But she was found

to be irreplaceable, unique

her song.