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Board Administrator Username: mjm
Post Number: 4053 Registered: 11-1998
| Posted on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - 5:20 pm: |
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Honorable Mention Sacred Ground Lisa Janice Cohen We step into the silence of scattered bones. Birds sound no alarm; their song falls in light rain around us. We form a circle of standing stones. The hunter is gone. Scavengers have cleaned the remains. There lies a single perfect hoof and a narrow pelvis, delicate. Pairs of vertebrae form the shape of dragonflies. We decide she was a fawn, driven by wind and hunger to this place that holds the sent of human spoor. I run my hand along the roughened bark where she fed. My children are not afraid though midsummer light has abandoned these dense trees. Our footfalls are as quiet as the memory of deer. We feed the campfire with brushes of dried pine, burn smooth wood the thickness of a femur. A pillar of smoke rises in still air. We return and find only spongy ground, undisturbed. The moss absorbs the sounds of our searching, muffles the drip of dew on upturned leaves.
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