Skeletons

If trees are lungs

in the summer,

they are nothing but

bones in the winter.

Skeletons lack the credit

they deserve. A skull

just the harbinger

of horror,

its once-eyes and

cheeks and smile

no longer

to be considered ;

and whether it’s

skin

or whether it’s

leaves,

the absence of

both

are the poster boys

come Hallowe’en’s

arrival—amid every-

thing that’s ghastly and

macabre.

And how quickly

we forget : the air which

maples gift us,

with our every

inhalation,

the beauty

of that child

on her bike,

run over 

much too soon,

by a car that

sped in the dark,

adding

a million toes

to its runaway, carbon

footprint.

Stephen King

might one day

write a novel

about it all:

Gabriella

the girl who rose

from the grave,

haunting every driver

after dusk,

on that forlorn

stretch of road,

bordered on either

side

with osseins

of ash and birch,

whatever else

they may have been.

Poets no longer

scrawl

on the juvenilia

of those trunks,

the etching

of initials

into their thriving ,

living bark,

now desolate

in the mist,

gnarly branches

vacant of wing and wonder,

bereft

of the launching of

green, the fires of

orange and red,

spring and fall

forgotten  in the fog ,

and when Luna

reveals each

reaching , fleshless finger :

scaring you out of your

wits

as you race

beneath

their canopy of

bones, which tap

upon your windshield

like the dot-dot-

dash of code

from the ugly dead.

Andreas Gripp

November 20, 2024

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