of stacked-up yellow bones
to climb the dead
toward his own salvation.
He wanted
light and fire, wanted
to reach and be close to his god.
But his god was the one
who opened his shirt
and revealed the scar of mortal climbing.
It is the scar
that lives in the house with me.
It goes to work with me.
It is the people I have loved
who fell
into the straight, unhealed
line of history.
It is a brother
who heard the bellowing cry of sacred hills
when nothing was there
but stories and rocks.
It was what ghost dancers heard
in their dream
of bringing buffalo down from the sky
as if song and prayer
were paths life would follow back
to land.
would walk that land,
pick through bones for hide, marrow,
anything that could be used
or eaten.
Once they heard a terrible moan
and stood back,
and one was not dead
or it had come back from there,
walked out of the dark mountains
of rotted flesh and bony fur,
like a prophet
coming out from the hills
with a vision
too unholy to tell.
It must have traveled the endless journey
of fear,
returned from the far reaches
where men believed the world was flat
and they would fall over
its sharp edge
into pitiless fire,
and they must have thought
how life came together
was a casual matter,
war a righteous sin,
and betrayal
wasn’t a round, naked thing
that would come back to them
one day.