Shannon Rankin, Anatomy Series (Hands), 2008 (map on paper)
I am old. A scrap the wind is busy
carrying off. The uncut grasses on
the graves, the manes of bay horses
we kept out on the ranch. I see old friends
walk by, I see the ones who’ve gone,
all of us on our long trails. They pay me
visits when I lie in bed at night,
or just anytime. In the shade
of the cottonwoods, a hot afternoon,
they enter my thoughts when I least expect.
They are there again and we go
on, the quick and the dead. Changing,
always changing. Near. I don’t
know what will come after. But to
leave all this behind—that I can’t
reconcile, for I did love it. The sky
that held me all these years, the breath
of antelope, the river lit with ice. I did
love it, though all along it meant to cast
me into darkness and leave me nameless.