Lot Poem by Morgan Michaels

'Don't look back!
need I remind
you? ' warned
the angel, ahead.
'Ok, ' panted Lot,
'I'm trying. Trying
to do what you said-'
while the town behind him burned;

But he wanted to be sure
his daughters complied:
one covered her face with her veil;
the other tied
a sash around her eyes
and limped along;
only his ditzy wife
dallied and turned.

'Unh-unh, you needn't remind me',
he muttered, under his breath.
How he had tried
to save the cities-!
but good men are hard to find:
no matter how he pled
that was God's condition
to spare the town from death and, um, perdition.

So they fled-
never knowing, never looking 'round
despite the awful, soughing sound
that left the town a city of the dead,
and never quit, but travelled day and night
until the first streak of golden light;
when, stopped to rest beneath a tamarind tree,
where once were four, he counted only three.