Tedium brought them here.
Bored with routine head-counts,
museums and man-made landmarks.

Impulse told them
To flatten the silent fronds,
Blindly tear down the hampering vines,
Rattle the industrious cities beneath their feet.

Curiosity led them
To this patch of unkempt squitch,
This sacred space littered with clean bones.

No words came with them.
Only Observation...


... a leaping fire tended by savages
Polished teeth strung around their necks,
The bark-ridged skin,
The supernaturally piercing eyes,
Their ashen members grazing the farinaceous earth.

At the heart of this sacred place
Littered with the clean bones,
Condesention covered them with coats,
Misinterpreted grins exposing evidential remains.

Fear penetrated their too-white skins,
Their souls through the sockets of their eyes,
Their clattering teeth.

All this is true :
The scattered bones,
The brass buttons blinking through starved ashes,

The arrows in a glass case.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012