Burial Mound

The young bones
Of a medicine man
Draped in rotted cloth
Unearthed in a hillside

The ghost of his skin
The memory of his
Stallion-black hair
Locked away in the poppies

Blooming in the grass
His epitaph is sweet
Like the smell of honeysuckle
That I put at his feet

Neither to mask
Nor to suppress
Nor to honor
Nor to forget

But to consider
If the love that
Glowed in his heart
Might still reside

In the things, buried
With him, the
Spices, the leaves
Stones, shining sapphires

No
Where it went, all
The scars of his battles
The sighs of those healed

By his herbs
By his words
The laughter of his
Children, his old age, went

Into the earth
And the husk now I see
Of the man before me
Is naught but the shell
Of a soul long free

Of age and pain
Of worry and tears
Of bondage and fear
But nonetheless forgotten
In his burial mound