Living like a scratchy long distance call

Muse a moment on the poetry of the dead, those lines and stanzas we may write from the other side of this life. What have they that they can write with? Scratches in the dirt, aches and pains, the broken glass and pottery littering African graves placed by the living like a scratchy long distance call; static and glitches in radio transmissions, chalk marks on boxcars and sidewalks, faded photos and lace, barbed wire fences marking boundaries, fog and city steam, spider webs, rain, wind, tree branches. The Dead may illustrate a poem with forms emerging from rust, frost or gnarled wood. They speak out in the throw of bones, dice or yarrow stalks, the fall of leaves, roll of thunder, crack of widow-makers. Lost items and sudden discoveries are often signs of their making. Imagine the epic poems that may be traced all around us, lying about in the world and built of worldly items by the unworldly hands and thoughts of those poets who have preceded us to the Land of The Dead!