Chapter Twenty-Six
Imove through the pines where the old moss swings,
green as corn husk, heavy with rain.
The woods know my name in the hush of their limbs;
they taught me the language of forgiveness in vain.
Behind me, something follows
a crack of twig, a breath not my own.
The crows lift black from the cypress knees
like scraps of a burned-up hymn.
Mama is gone, beyond the creek’s dark bend.
The evening hangs low and bruised.
Father’s praying for tools they wont use,
and the mud keeps the print of my hooves.
I run.
Through briar and sweetgum, through curtains of moss,
while the forest watches with a hundred blind eyes.
Then thunder blooms sudden inside my ribs,
and the earth rushes up to the sky.
I lie where the red clay drinks me slow.
The pines lean close as mourners.
Above, the steeple on a house of sin rises pale as a graveyard flower,
and the crows settle back in the branches.
The woods know my name in the hush of their limbs.
They take it softly from my mouth.
By morning I’ll be only moss and bone,
another prayer the forest swallowed down.