It’s soil, not dirt,
Dark, not light.
It’s silver, not gold.
Books read by candlelight.
Bruises you can’t figure,
They just appear in the night
When all you can remember
Are the dreams you hold tight.
It’s the holes in your shoes
You don’t realize ‘til Winter,
When all the murky puddles
You slouch through seep into
Your warm, mismatched wool socks
With the holes in the toes.
Where did the other one get to?
Well, nobody knows.
It’s the feathers you find
On your stoop in the morning.
The mushroom cloud plume
Of fresh cream in yr coffee.
It’s the sweet, sharp tang
Of smoke on the wind.
The stack of old postcards
You always forget to send.
The loud, static buzz
Of power lines in late summer
When the Dog Days have drained us.
It’s lightning, not thunder.
That dusty guitar that sits in the corner?
The soft sound it makes is the spell we are under.
You can’t see it in daylight
And most nights it hides,
But it gathers in fog banks
And sometimes, through it, you drive
On your way home from business
All alone in your car
When the clouds make a thick blanket
And you can’t see the stars.
It’s the mangled tree roots
You trip on in the forest
And the moss that breaks your fall.
It’s waiting there for us.
Like the white, bleached bones of an animal
Picked clean in the sun,
It was there before we were,
It will be when we’re gone.
But how did it get there
If not put there by us?
And where will it go
If we don’t pick it up?
