circling a few gnawed bones,
one lone foot.
I’ve seen this before.
In ’62. Backyard lawn after dawn,
everything else was gone,
carried off in the mouthes
and bellies of the raccoons
who ate my pet crow.
Why does that vision
return now, in a dream?
Even fragments rarely last
for more than a few seconds
after waking and then falling
back into orphic meandering.
I knew of death at the time,
I was nine, but this was
my introduction to deep grief.
News of a friend’s death
reached me this week,
I don’t know which came first,
the dream or the message.
Doesn’t matter, I embrace
mystery wherever it emerges
from the shadows. Carved into the wall
of an ancient ruin. In a cloud or a tree,
or even a random social media post.
Grief and sorrow sit like a cyst that
resists the body’s efforts to absorb it.
Waiting patiently to break up
the everyday, every night cycles
of every year’s yesterday’s happy
memories and tomorrow’s promises.
Still there, like an old acquaintance.
Not a friend, but it remains just a cyst
not a tumor.
Mark - Scary.....
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