THE CHILDREN OF THE PLAIN

Small they are, and rudderless,

They wander in the hot places

                           and touch their burn marks from time to time.

You’ve seen them, avoided them,

Watching the birds circle over them,

Their blood full of ashes, city boys lost in the sun.

Their eyelids, it happens, are weighed down by birds, small birds

And colorless, who lead them

                                                    beside the dry waters.

They’ve become the invisible ones,

Their footprints like tiny monuments

In the ever-erasing sands,

                                              the ever-erasing sands.