vast fields beyond the kingdom walls

in the aftermath of the war,

any war really,
they stood their at the edge of the freeway,
three indians,
and we drove past with our pockets full of their  children’s’ bones,
with the sunlight hard against our eyes,
and the starving went unmentioned

the sky was blue, like time frozen and made holy,

and the trees had just begun to turn

it was that last year before the true famine,

when we still believed in miracles,
when we still knew the names of every saint

it was three indians on the side of the road,

and one of them blind,
and i couldn’t make out the sign he held,
and then we were past

it was a dream about starving children devoured by wolves

and i couldn’t speak

stood nailed to the railroad tracks,

sat frozen on the living room floor while the flames approached,
fell endlessly down some abandoned well,
and when i woke up the sun was in my eyes

we were moving fast past dead black water,

past the dead black trees that rose up leafless out of it

it was three tiny crosses on the side of the highway,

markers left by anonymous hands and
nothing in any direction for a hundred miles,
and it was a wreath of dying flowers

it was where the bodies had been found,

or maybe where they’d last been seen

the air was chalkwhite and dizzying,

hot,
thick with tar and gasoline

it was summer,

towards the end of the war

we were neither here nor there