Saving Old Poetry

I’m finding bones in the garden
Where the darkness is spiked with cold
Asleep with webs of roots and worms
Winding through the shifting mold

What lost and murky deed was this
In the mist of some long lost night?
That has moldered thus for decades
Away from the air and light?

The shovel turns soil as black as pitch
And clicks against dry bone
Perhaps they should stay hidden here
Undiscovered, untouched, alone?

Perchance there are secrets buried here
That are better left unfound?
Perhaps what this marrow clay conceals
Is best left underground?

Still I dig and flip the shovels-full,
On the ground debris is strewn
Jumbled, disjointed, human bones
White and cold in the shade of the moon

I force my eyes to the macabre brew
In trembling, terror and fear
But as I gaze, moon shadows shift
And the still, pale bones come clear

They are white as pearls in the moonwash
In this garden cold and wild
Unearthed from out the haunted soil
Are the clean bones of a child

The slender bones of a maiden
Scattered across the broken ground
What secrets to these ivory bones
Like ivy roots are bound?

For there is a mystery on them
Unearthed too late, too soon
Suffused with mystical meaning
They glow with more than moon

Who was she, who lies broken here
In echoed pale illusion
These bones of alabaster ice
In scattered, lost confusion?

Did once a name, a heart, a face
Bloom bright beneath the sun?
Before the dank and silent earth
Took all to be undone?

Did the starlight wash her silent
As it sifted from above?
Was she spun of air and magic
As she danced her dream of love?

There is no voice to that dream now
In this dark that has no dawn
No throat is stretched with song here
The singer is vanished, gone

All that was, is afterward
All is nevermore
All that might come after
Was broken by the past before

She is gone without a breath now
Where there dwells no lasting chance
No whisper sings her song now
No steps that mark her dance

And yet - there are these secret bones
Lucent mysteries in the ground
Brittle, broken lilies
Twined with ivy all around

Still full of pith and marrow
Even after all the years
They shine like moon deep opal
Echoed mirrors of ancient tears

A testament everlasting
A rune thorn clearly drawn
Sundered, slivered, broken
Transformed, but not yet gone

There are splinters of words in this garden
Deep buried beneath the stones
Hearts blood spilled onto paper
The truth of a young girls bones

So I gather those splinters like relics
Disjointed and scattered apart
An incomplete hallowed collection
Piles of paper stained with my heart

And there is a mystery on them
Unearthed too late, too soon
Suffused with mystical meaning
They glow with more than the moon

I lock them away, safe and sacred
Shattered bones still charmed and entranced
I save them in humble remembrance
Of the girl who once wore them to dance


©Edwina Peterson Cross