A rib of rock, a vertical
carcass, piercing the greasy sod.
The prairie vestments, liturgical
death, rubbed cattle trails we trod.
The road cut, spills corpses
into ditches, littering the earth's
shoulders:an aged grassland warp.
If not for the roads, their births
would be unknown, their deaths
revealed. This trail to sea, breath
forgotten, dips like veins rolling
from needles. The sloughs lee-
side where winter runoff, cajoling
me to wade barefoot to my knee.
Fine grain dust, powder puffs
with each wet foot imprints, transitory
when stacked against limestone bluffs.
House, fence, sidewalk, quarry
mined, a reliquary of ancient days.
The quarry, the ends of ends,
an indent between hills. A clump
of household trash. The debris depends
on a paradoxical glimpse
of the Permian past, a dump
of childhood rubbish,
tin cans mixed with trilobite seas.
The grassland rises to a seam-
less crimp. Rocky Mountains erode
to form the High Plains. A felled scheme,
hiding the rough edges, a mother lode
from the sea; sandstone laid bare, a salt
cavern tomb, Therefore lies my life
exposed, layers of rock, a crooked fault,
diatomaceous earth rife with veins of grey milky chert.
My life in layers of rock and dirt.
I bleed my stories upon the plains.
Leviathan fragments deposed
and ossified. the stains
from rusty barbs, fenceposts imposed
upon the cattle pastures.
The trail of tales to the quarry
road, belies a childhood treasure:
fossil rocks and family trash, an allegory
of life, death, and family pleasure.
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