Memories at Stake
There was a time, before the water ran inside the house, we ran outside.
A house is but a wooden tent, you know. A place to shelter from the snow,
And rain, and colder days. Your house gives you a place to hide.
Until the water can be run inside, and then you have a place to go.
Our house was stark, like many others of its day,
With shingles from the rooftop to the ground.
But home it was to us, a place to learn and play,
And somehow, much more beautiful than mansions all around.
I see them clustered on the hillsides, like soldiers camping for the day,
Marching, ever marching, to a distant dawn of battle.
No longer sheltered by the forest, for the trees have gone away.
Are they the enemy? First yielding to our cattle,
And then to cornfields, and then once more,
Their bones erected o’er their graves, no tombstone but the hearth,
Within the graveyard filled with casualties of our war,
We dance. We make our instruments from them, and our mirth.
What did they do to us to earn such spiteful torment?
We could not run to them for shelter from harsh air.
For in Winter, indifferent they stand, naked and quite dormant,
With only arms of supplication reaching up in silent prayer.
NicknamedBob . . . . . . . . . March 21, 2005