A Pebble of Bone

There’s a man walking down the road
of gravel and regret.
Old and tired,
he’s bone-weary from miles
of hoping that his next footfall
will see a blue lake
or an early grave—
either would be okay
if he could just stop measuring time
with steps that began in Eden.

I look from my cabin window
and he is gone.
Until I look more carefully, that is,
and hear the gravel shuffled and ground
with a cadence of glaciers shaving creation down.
Like everyone before him,
he has become the road.
I go outside and pick up
a pebble of bone, a reminder
that we, too, carry the sins of the world.

Pic: Creative Commons 2.5

The Dead Are Forever Writing Letters

The dead are forever writing letters,
their bodies mulching into leaves.

Maple parchment tells me a young bride
was killed by the undertaker’s son.

Snow and dirt and time
archive the words we choose in death.

Free verse or rhyme,
we are all published in the end.

Pic—public domain

Day and Night

The silver rings pass through each other,

the magician pulling them east and west

with a double hitch of his hands

to show they are locked fast, like lovers.

And then they are divorced,

circles no longer sharing the quotidian mystery

of day and night sliding into each other

as they trace infinity along the equator.

The magician returns home

after the sun has fallen over the rim.

He says nothing to his wife as they eat

on opposite sides of the round kitchen table.

Pic: Public Domain