He became one with the shallow grave
and the empty heart. The grasping,
claw-picked skull can hear the howls
of a Snowy Owl and the song
of a grey wolf echo across miles and miles
of Nebraska canyonland.
All the nocturnes licked him clean.
Ate his memories, left a blank slate –
wet and glowing like polished chrome.
Because he was left to rot
he became wolf, raccoon, fox and ant.
Now his flesh resides in geometric
sockets of hornet nests and the tall stems
of prairie brome. His sight
lives in the eye of the red fox kit
and the Snowy Owl. And you?
You, good friend, only become dry bone
in a constricted box. Stolen from immortality
by this oaken separation between you
and what you choose to call home.