Illustration of the Blackfoot Indian medicine man.
George Catlin, source Wikimedia Commons.

What started off clear became obscured by the cloud’s thickening brow. The night passed on to dawn, this time we contemplate the dead.

And we pass down a darkened lane to the end, past the signs and arrows carved in the sides of a cave.

We pass by the edge of the woods, by a hole in the fence that leads to a path in the dark called The Magic Place, that place in the soul and all its pasts.

And we rub our thumbprints across the sky for war, to make ourselves look fierce, to kill. We raise our hearts to the sky so we can grow wings like the crow.

And the wind is a tidal force that swallows the shore and shakes the trees, a rattle of bones, a dance.

And the clouds cross over so slow like the day we died with their hands on our eyes.

And we cross over a ditch through a hole in the fence and do not feel our feet hit the ground.

We pass through and follow the markings for Hidden Driveways, No Turn Around signs.

We cross over the ditch with the scraps and the muck and we are carried there by a calling, from the leaves flapping and their hands clapping, come.

And the spray-painted markings could be code for the holes we put in the ground, for the power lines and poles on their sides and the men who climb them like ants.

It is the time of transcendence to realize we are one in the same.

It is the time of realization to be carried off by the wind, to die.

We dreamed our souls would see the ground from the sky one day.

We forgot in our hearts we are warriors, we must go into the dark of the cave to remember that.

Categories: Poetry

Tags: All Souls Day, American Indian art, Carlos Castaneda, George Catlin, Halloween, inspiration, nature, petroglyphs, petrograms, poem, Poetry, souls, spirits, spirituality, writing