Maps
Like doctors' charts
Tell us we are still breathing
Streets pulsing electrocardiographic songs
And city names call out to us
Reminding us of the journey still ahead
But the dots are so heavy
Like tumors clogging our veins
They deceive us into loneliness
Faculties suspended and
Tied down our hospital bed routines

So burn the cities
Drown the roads
Forsake the boundaries
And watch as it all becomes one again
Roadways no more than black scars against
Backdrops of elegant blues and vibrant greens
Oblivious to the steel
All growths removed
Brings new vitality into the landscape
Let's retreat to the forest
And bathe in the ponds and streams of the foothills
Wash the asphalt from our lungs
And clothe ourselves in the splendor of the pines
Gathering, Palmetto sweet, and reinventing family
Together
Like bees
Like mountains
Like lives stitched
Like so many blades of grass becoming of field
Together
Sutured by only one name and
Union in the breath that we share
Emphasis on the collisions of our vim
And the rest we find in the aftermath

I take off my shoes to go outside
And bathe my toes in the richness of the interconnectedness of the roots
The soft earth like a quiet bed
Like a forgotten brother and a warm welcome home
We will find rest there
We will lay to rest there
Dust to dust and part of the whole once more

Broken maps tell secrets
They whisper softly that
Amidst the pieces
There is peace

The Grave Arcade II