The Angel from Ohio

There were flames as intense as
those rising
from a gas station fire
that had to be
extinguished.
Nobody wanted it to end like that.
Burned down to the heat-cracked cement.
There had to be something that was
worth saving.
Something.
Repair work would  take
hundreds of thousands of years
to complete
strangers clanging away
with the sorry-ass tools available them now.
There were ashes as sober
as Satan
and as deep as Dionysus
piled up everywhere
and Common Sense was
sniffing around, too, asking a lot
of unanswerable questions,  like
   "  Who's sorry now?  "
but the Angel from Ohio never
wavered
never faltered
never sighed.