ARMISTICE DAY — VETERANS DAY

Goosebumps and Cloud Sinew

In a foreign land where we never found our footing

Photo by Nonik Bela on Unsplash

Her eyes burned with ancient fire
and she spoke in a register so low
it reached me as goosebumps,
bone vibration, the words following
like a patter of raindrops on mossy logs

She was known as a shaman
her hair dark at the roots
white as milkweed floss at the ends,
she said she was glad to be back
in a time when the land grew trees

It was forbidden to speak with her
so of course we did
at the pond beyond Firebase Oasis
in the deep jungles of the Central Highlands
she, tucked among the gnarly roots
spinning tales of surfing time

Time was a vast forest, she said
and she could alight
in a grove of future if she chose
or ball herself into lightning and arc across
a still green sea to a moment when creatures
first slithered onto land