a poem of Contemplation
Beneath this earth
so many souls. In this ground
right where I stand,
my bare-heeled ache on the grit;
do they linger here?
Do their solemn hazes pass me by
as my breath drifts me
one day to the next?
Am I aware of
that chill, that pressure in the air
shifting, disturbing,
a moaning whisper to my
human ears?
Does it shift me?
I turned on the light
I asked you to leave
In the pierce of afternoon sun
an oak; a bleak, towering,
ivy-choked oak.
An angular ghost.
The last leaf fell long before
I appeared, a shifting soul,
nowhere to go.
I contemplate its lean.
When comes the terrible fall?
When comes the violent creaking
that will rip me from my sleep?
Sudden noises — squirrel-gray
antics on maple boughs,
on living, bending boughs or dead
bark-bare and bony limb;
no difference to them,
with their inexorable ramblings
all toenail and chatter.
They gather and they gather.
How soon will I sink into
worm-foul and rot?
They will scurry across my grave.
They, or their generations of they.
The dead tree refusing to fall…
These wiry-tailed rodents’ gatherings…
These shadows of souls carried quietly by…
and I?
Barefooted, sore-footed I;
standing in the dirt
left to ponder it all.
How soon will this earth
swallow me whole?
Christina M. Ward 
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