where do all of the skeletons go?
to the pale gloom of a frostless field

with only the remnants of winter lying
in grey pits of slush
gaping open like eyes

the easy river lopes
thin and slender

a dying sunflower
brittle as chips
of sullen gold ore

made phosphorescent
by the blue light of evening

smiles up as the bones pass by
caught in chambers of light
and burgundy august

aching deep in the marrow
of those thin white bones

where blood once boiled and curdled and fumed
now reduced to the dying breath of tomorrow
sweet, sometimes salty

always forgotten
amidst clutter, doll’s heads, plastic cows, other things

but never removed
from the spectrum of sight
a memory can haunt like a body can love

a thin corpse of water
encasing the elegy of old fey stones

in the stream wisps of moss reach the surface
their zenith, to find it is only the start of an
endlessly hideous world (they run from the danger)

as old as the trees and as young as a flame
and the memories fade and leave their scars

but why do all the skeletons go
lurking in old autumn fields in the rain

the sun bleeds russet pastilles of
tiger’s eye pigment, a blossom of firelight
from luminous spinning cocoons

hung from spider’s webs and weeping trees
fresh and dizzy with dew and the hazes

of wander-sparked nomads and lizard’s tongues
and skeletons walking the path of tomorrow
tossing blue intestines of yesterday, limpid and grotesque

to where I caught them in my hands
and strands of tissue and pale gloom

memories do not forget
and the skeletons walk in a land of autumn
as they sleep in the closet, collecting dust.