Hatathli

He rose up,
lined face like
old, oil darkened
wood,

shirt fraying at
the cuff and collar,

sweat-stained
Stetson hat the
color of dust,

long silver hair
drawn back and
clasped against
his neck with a
turquoise and
sliver broach,

and the sound of
his voice was
very clear against
the tapestry of the
oncoming twilight,

and the wind left the
sky and all was quiet,
clear as midwinter
without the chill,

and he sung the long
songs of ancestors and
eons, his boots kicked
off and shapeless with
wear beside the the
hand-woven rug,

and his feet were pale,
his ankles thin and
bony, his toes curled
with age and each nail
thick and hardened yellow,

and the movements
of his hands meant
things I couldn’t
put words to, but
I felt them, felt them
in the marrow of the
bones with each turning,
each phantom reaching
into souls of other
bards from another
generation,

and the speaking song
he told out against the
tapestry of the stars being
born spoke of the lost
things—of the ancient
worlds beneath the
ground,

and how animals
talked then, and how
we could understand
them, our ears undeafened
in the first lands of earth,

and how people once knew
the secret of breathing, of
walking in beauty and
needing nothing but what
the land could offer,

and how those worlds were
abandoned, always in the
quest for more, or better,
or different, and that perhaps
this place, too, would be
thought of as an ancient
world someday,

with different suns plowing
furrows in foreign skies,

and earth unknown to us
sifting slowly between our
toes upon the verge of
some vast and unknown
desert.