This is a whale’s backbone and this is a whale’s cervical spine. And we were there together. And we are here together. The whale marks the trail off the beach and into the dunes and toward the bay and around the cape and in the direction of home. My dream wrist wears one of the heavy bones of the tale. My dream hand rides down their back like waves as we sleep together on the softest sand.
This is a whale’s backbone and this is a whale’s cervical spine. And we were there together. And we are here together. The whale marks the trail off the beach and into the dunes and toward the bay and around the cape and in the direction of home. My dream wrist wears one of the heavy bones of the tale. My dream hand rides down their back like waves as we sleep together on the softest sand.
Still going and still more to go. Always a new offering as if the end is always somewhere else.
The Eagles lodge hunkers down in one corner of its wide, empty lot, buried under several blankets of unwanted paint. Men camp in a cramped parking lot across the street. The clouds gather but the rain doesn’t come.
I don’t know where the ghosts hide all summer, but I feel their sighs of relief now that the season and our attention has turned.
The crow objects. Protective of this sumac and this particular geometry of wires. But the complaint is mild. She turns to face me as I move around the bush, offering her best angle.
This tree tells me to embrace chaos every time I pass. Peel, twist and crack is your motion, the world’s perpetual unfurling. Rest in the shadows. Ride the crest of the curl.
The long-legged take over from the thick-waisted and begin their brief rule over this small city of stray tomato plants and late wildflowers. We all devour the last tastes of sun.
Needles everywhere, yet the concrete grows soft. My shadow finds pause. Joins. Blankets.
Not succumb but surrender. The freedom of letting go. Release your grip and fall into what’s held you all along
Apologies for hastening your death just so you could decorate the periphery of my dish washing for a couple of days. What was wrong with leaving you to lean across my walkway, tossled by the wind, anchored in the cooling earth?
So much is boarded up or barely open. I sip my coffee on the sidewalk and dodge the mailman and the masked passers by. The man across the street leaves his belongings in the doorway and heads around the corner telling himself (or someone else?) a story about living in Phoenix. He wears short sleeves despite the chill, revealing a snake tattoo riding on his forearm. Maybe he would understand how my heart has been replaced with a hive of bees.
Instead of faithful hands or lips rubbing a sacred toe to a high shine, our now slightly less shiny cars, trucks and trailers leave their offerings on the pillar at the end of the alley. The sacrifice required for entry.
This skin. So easily torn. But the tear becomes a well. And the well is made of death and light.
This tree grew up through the bones of children and made a thing called majesty. It echoed through me as my feet found the needled grass between roots and graves.
Life marks the markers of the dead. One hundred years gone or more and this field of forgotten ancestors continue to play host. Welcome dog walkers and bike riders and neighborly strollers and lawn mower riders and spiders and beetles and lichen and moss.
Tracy Burkholder 
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