we touched the sky

with suffered silos:

feigned gates on which my love might hang 

scabbed wreaths creaking in idle winds

peppered, long-feln

to keep the flies off 

to keep some facsimile of youth intact

another field-dressed carcass

only good for sausage

by the watershed.

 

ground is a funny word, isn't it? 

rough-hewn earths and

torn up turfs and

a finer powder of mammalia

made indistinguishable 

by the hungry, blistered work

of digging, depraved. 

but what other shapes

are less recognized 

than the bodies 

to feed the bodies

to dig the graves, unknowing

or worse: knowing

but afraid to care. 

 

yes--the ground. 

 

yet quick-wicked we burn

to stay forgetful

of the size of the holes 

we dug,

 

collapsing souls on the march

of a lunching hills--

they pulled the rug 

and that almond-laden feed

to our chagrin

has worked as intended.

and our regrets,

spade-shaped

are taken up by our sons

until the grand sphere 

is hollow

to the core.

 

and that's the price of this, I suppose

so much higher 

than the worth

of the musings of a hanged man

a corpse among crows.