The bones on bead shells hang on cemeteries,
left behind from the washing tide pushing to the open ocean. I too, left in the bay,
walking railroads and lost in the forest and the trinkling springs
of yesterday's rain.
I've been cleansed, I've been strong.
A mountain man soaring the world on an ancient feather's wind.
Halk feather soaring through infinite vastness.
I've felt deeper things.
Farther than the oceans surface, beyond the green of the cedar.
The smoke, cleansing.
And now,
the silence of the rivers.
Raged and battled, done and fought,
until next Spring.
It is dawning upon me
whether to keep walking this track,
or perhaps this road is empty,
holding nothing.
Old trucks, trees growing from red sawdust of old logging sites,
they too abandoned and left behind
like cabins on desolate mountain tops.
Beaming, vibrant,
for a season or two,
then surrendered to moss and lichen,
going down with rock and stone,
a jar of apple sauce still in place.
Damp, musty rusted iron,
dust on splitting wood.
The grey sky.
Numb on my neck hangs the bones and shell,
stolen from the cemetery.
Am I moving this thing forward or am I falling behind with it?
Forgotten in the breeze and the rush of cattle,
footsteps, as caravans and horses, men, women, echoes, laughter, shadows,
ran from these banks.
Have I become the grit on the gravestone,
my bones ashen and weary as I live this life,
elsewhere moon clouds and sunshine,
drums beat.
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For me,
it is the silence,
like a gentle tide
washed my flesh
from the grate
and now I hang in the wind,
like a pale sheet,
flapping slowly
to and fro.