The Waiting Game

The waiting game of wondering seemed,
once all the ruins were raw, to have ended
or just begun. “O Elders within,” he mused,
“I receive you in the soil,” then clambered up
the hill, ancestors be damned, and looked about,
the assembly of graves pushing through his feet
and hands into the sky, the sun now indigestible,
emptied and waiting to be sealed in what he saw
must be the wondering at last—all the numbers odd,
each thought a slice of rust and snow. He watched
a ghost snake watching a snake watching a ghost
beneath a rock, looked off, back, and all was gone.
Such a fool I’ve been, he read within the clouds,
neither to harvest nor plant of late, only to wander
and spade in the evering night, for this bounty of
compost is all mine, he quickened, gazing at his
feet atop the earthly grass, the mother, the father
not felt as his long held within, and saw, once more,
the bullfrog perched on the shady log in the pond
where he did child-fish, watching, and how he had
tossed his line only to end himself hooked, staring
into the night. Well-forward he stepped, lightened
by all he carried, seeing only more of what was less,
though not the fox carcass wrought to skull and spine
between tufts of fur now watching from the lime—
a sudden screech of memory leaked into the wind
spun him within, split the shoes upon his splayfeet
walking the dark streets down until, nearing their
house, his father grabbed him by the shoulders
and pulled him into the soil to stay.