If you were to open the hills, all of the past would pour out.
Treasure, piling on bones, piling on pottery, piling on stones
Secrets and lives. Spilling out, in
A flood of velocity, time breaking forwards
Waking up above the ground, a stranger.
You are small, in the wake of all that.
Caught up to your ankles. Trudging
Trudging for as long as your calves hold out
Trudging and looking
Scanning and sweeping
Bowing your head and trailing a hand through the rubble
The rubble stares back.
Throbbing beneath your palm
Charging you with something to know.
You fall to your knees, getting down low and crawling
Strands of hair fall into your vision
As you crawl onwards.
As you crawl your hair gathers treasures
Coins and jewels and collar bones quiver with a force
Melding into one.
Callouses cover your hands now, you're in deep.
Been trudging onwards for miles. The hills gaping wide.
The treasure spins into strands, miles long, weighty strands
They know you, reaching up like familiar hands
And pulling you down,
Roots of an ancient kind
You peer through the weight of tired eyes
The pinched sun going out and
You desperately seeking
Tearing at the ground at the piles of all that past
And letting go of a dreadful wailing sound
Killing the air. There's a glint
Onwards, up ahead
Taking charge. You drag, pull, peel yourself, just a little further
Onwards, just up ahead.
And brushing aside the lint,
You have it in your hands, restored. A little piece of what went missing
Rolling over into time, your hair wraps you, plaits you
The grand hills gulp and the past sinks back inside.