I.
When the snow came we sheltered ourselves away.
Warm by the pyres.
We let them burn.
Cinder and ash.
The dying light of our fires,
like a hundred stars swaying,
winking almost, against
the banks of snow covered hills.

Deep in our slumber we felt the
touch of warm spring.
Water cool enough to swim in.
Blue and green and milk white.
In waking, and we did so with protest,
there remained only the gray white
of winter dawn and the ****** cold.

When one of us fell, frostbite or exhaustion and little else,
we would carry them along.
Burials impossible, we added
their number to the pyre.
In this way we could keep warm.
In this way we could pretend that
we still felt human and alive.

Some days the snow was hard enough to
stand on.
Other days it was clean enough to eat.
Still we walked.
Always, it seemed, we walked.
Always we.

II.
In the heat of desert day we would fan
ourselves with our hands.
We didn't dare to remove any .
We didn't dare not to stop to drink.

We wrapped our heads in cloth and
worshiped long forgotten gods.
On days when we couldn't move through
the sand storms we made camp.
We were once many.
We were so many.

Now we are walking.
If this trudge toward oblivion
could be called walking.
And walking we called it.
We would stop to smile lies
at one another.
We would stop to die.

Forgotten as old gods.
Less than the sand we died on.
Less than the whole.
Incomplete.

And we would be left were we left.
We didn't bury anyone.
We were so many.

III.
Call to me, for I can only just hear you.
Call for me
and I will come.
I will find you against odds and
skies.
I will see you whole.
I will breath you complete.

We awake to movement.
We are movement.
Ever walking, ever here and there.
Looking, we believe.
We believe in nothing.

IV.
There are those that want our things.
Our sad detritus.
Our lives before it ended.

Incomplete decks of playing cards.
Eye glasses with lens missing.
A license plate from an old car.
(They are all old cars.)
Mason jars, soda bottles,
cans, thermos, can of peanuts
all filled with water.

It's the water they want from us,
though they will take the other things.
They always take the other things.
Memories and dust.
Memories and Dust.
Cinders and Ash.

We were many.

V.
When finally we are alone,
the leaves fall about us.
The moon hangs in our imperfect sky.
In the end there is us.
And the end is us.
And we?
We are alone.
We were many.
We are one.