HAY*

Loping in a grief-soaked cloak
through what feels like

a century of tundra vigils,
dark forest initiatory fires,

and a thousand acres
of banished thought,

a lone pilgrim kisses
the dead along the way -

the ones that don't know 
they're dead yet.

He passes grave diggers
doing their moonlit digging

while screech owls hunt
to the sound of 

unsyncopated shovels.

This man's pilgrimage

is not to reach some
bejeweled mountain palace

but simply to find
a field of freshly cut hay

in the mind and sleep 

of a towheaded boy's

fevered, summer 

dreaming.

*Inspired by an essay by Martin Shaw entitled, The Hawk and the Otherworld