Winter slush
prints
boot
bottoms, deer and bird tracks, and squirrel feet
on top of
the earth;
water, ice,
snow, sleet become
wet inked
and plaster cast soles and hooves that
leave mud-like
depressions
of
ambulatory relics that won’t be baked in a desert or
frozen in
permafrost
to create
twenty-first century fossils.
The earth
will absorb them
like it consumes
the weight of
most travelers
whose tracks
crisscross at
different times and places
without a
common origin or destination
appearing
like Brownian motion
on top of the
earth’s surface
as the cold
air’s tentacled hold
on water’s freezing
states breaks
and releases
the winter’s ground covers.
The steps cannot
be retraced;
trips across
the field or along the wood line are lost;
scampering
steps to the nearest tree disappear;
foraging
steps before an instant ascent to flight vanish;
and break-neck
runs for the wood’s camouflage colors
melt away.
Each step is
written over,
layers of
steps lost
as each new
script is added;
the old is absorbed
into the fibers of the document
and cannot
be recovered
as soon as a
new text is scrawled across
that earthen
page.
©cmheuer, February, 2019
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