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Lookout

I pick up this stick pin. Fifty cents worth of ink. Consider animals on my path. Whether there is luck - good or bad. The dead visit me or I stand at the highest lookout, searching for their ghosts. Rippling Monarch butterfly reminiscent of mother, gone. Or patient hawk, like devilish departed
step father on a tall roadside lamp post. Seeking meat and broken eggs below.

We are carnivore though we don’t eat our young. Together, as children we learned of a heavenly place, were directed to picture the old dead greeting the newly dead. At night, my mind cannot cast out its doubts. Weighted foot blanket, grief. I conjure necessary recipes like dog-eared leaves of the Bible passed into granddaughters’ hands. Photographs mistaken for memories...


...Neither epiphany nor revelation. Only the faith to keep us in the circle. Dizzy and in concert with ground and sky and the envelope between.


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