i listen to the old gods and
the old gods have bent an ear,
girded round by thickets,
they've yet bent an ear.
who listens to barren old women?
ha!
tricksters, an unnamed few.
girded round by thickets,
long obscured, untended,
an overgrown garden.
lush!
canted polewise in our direction,
at last. that two sided coin whose
faces once laughed at ancestral rites
grew cold and sad (without remorse)
at our withdrawal.
they understood none of it,
as we understood none of it,
led by the puppeteering
tunes of the Pied Piper,
the slaver,
the trafficker,
the rootless wanderer,
the stranger,
the mocker,
the liar,
the usurper,
the tyrant,
the destroyer,
to forget (without forgiving)
the compassing direction of
that path, anterior, to find
where they've been hidden,
and girded round by thickets,
have bent an ear, eager.
do remember
the blood, the purifying fire, the stars,
the towering mountain that stands
above the uncanny valley where
our people have been buried alive
under two thousand years of sand,
for it is this, and not the other,
that shall beat
beat
a trail upon fallen leaves
to mend a broken vow and
make whole a piecemeal sacrifice.
ours for us, our own, again.
we make it so.
so says the old gods, in a whisper
girded round by a subtle laugh,
speckled as they are by yew
netted sun, they've bent an ear
and listened to our plaintive coil.
even blind as we are blind,
nature cries out to nature,
and a footfall narrows the ear,
and upon that loamy shore
we find each other.
August 28, 2024
