Explorers

By the time
Our wagon line
Was severed

The calico flesh
And iron bones
Strewn to the bush

We knew that we were food

And yet
We tended
To our diaries

Apart, the way
Beasts prefer
To eat alone

The paper was our skin

We wet
The nibs
With our tongues

And scrounged
For ink
In the scrub

There would be no mail

I chose a tree
Just right
For the burial

One hessian wrapped
And leather bound
Apocrypha

Sealed, signed with a spade

This poem appears in


Pass it Along

© Brendan Bonsack
April 2016