Adea Lennox
There once was a river where the buffalo roam
There once was a heart in the hearth of this home.
This is a tale that tells of where it all went wrong.
When my grandfather was a wandering man
A sack made of leather and a fistful of sand
He carried in his chest a stone blue as dawn
And the face of the virgin chiseled into his bone.
When we were born he’d pull up his sleeve and bare his forearm
In the light of the fire her face would appear beneath his thin skin
Pulled tight by our hands so soft with innocence.
Struck by lightening in the heat of a daytime storm
This he said, was how he was touched by god
And married to the ground, all in one afternoon.
Under cover of darkness Soaked through with rain
a young woman found him laying in pain.
To she he was a foreigner
But his eyes said “home.”
He sang to her sweetly like the kernels of corn
Rubbed with butter freshly churned.
When she asked from where he came
He squeezed her hand till the end of his days and on his last breath “I have seen many suns,
I’ve faced the crook of the moon
Who stole my pistol and shot the stars till they all fell down.
The dust in your corner is their memory forlorn.”
One morning she awoke to the chill of his touch
To find that someone had carved out the stone in his chest
And left not one sliver of blue
For her to cling to.
