byCarolyn Dunn
- Footprints
look the same
in the light
of bright
1000 year old
ponts of white
in the darkening womb
of the universe.
Here on the sand,
in ocean wooded
streams of
pale worn
ghostly mirrored
oceans of darkness
I see the impressiom
upon the landscape
of five toes
a heel
and the detailed
lines of skin
drawn taught
across sinew
bones
and chips
of bright
red
blood.
Like a depression
lines are drawn
in the space
between
hand
and
flesh.
Between
foot and
fetish.
I touch the place
his hand rested.
The smooth
brown
well worn
places
my lover's hand
aches to own.
Places his fingertips
in the imbedded lines
of feet
in the sand.
Water rises
like lace spread
across in delicate
breath
and
fragile.
Its beauty
remains briefly.
It covers the
remnant of a
man's foot
fills up quickly
its white, clear
like glass movements
fade and take with
it
the memory
of the foot
like my body
remembers
his touch
like the crackling
electric sparkles
and water
across my back
the footsteps
trail embedded
in my mind.
This grandmother---
this land---
remembers his touch
and those thereafter.
And the ocean
is that of her
tears
cried on this trail.
We were the first,
I remind him,
my voice fades
into the soft
white part
of his hands.
I touch the imprint
and in my memory
where I hold it in my body,
the footprints
across the
Trail of Tears
look the same
as the imprint tonight
500 years later.
The landscape does not forget.
The bruises fade
but the body
knows every inch,
every line
of pain
covered with lace, velvet, wood
and glass.
From Outfoxing Coyote, That Painted Horse Press.