What the last trail took from me. |
THE LAST TRAIL January 29, 2005 I came to uproot the trees by their fists for the wind to blow around on another trail where October would fossick through their leaves like crunchy jewels on some other ride beside a river you would never cross. I took the beat of hooves so there is no sound and ripped each print off the kibbled path like erased words as red legs, like sticks, went up for the last time. I took the apples and soured their juices and browned their insides and wrinkled their softened flesh. Now they have rusted, are ruined, and rotted for no one is there to nuzzle their bulbous bodies or to taste their sweet summer succulence; the pre-autumn crunch of a season passing swiftly by. I took my rag and wiped off the pines and tainted the vanilla air; I took the bright jingles and the dim jangles and the jungle silvers and stuffed them in my silent cotton pockets; I stole the creaks and leather groans and every thump, thud, and thwack of tail, hair, or ladigo, and wrung the baby necks of nose-sniffed rabbits, and the wing-swept sough of soft owl landings, and peering white tails from green fevered thickets and bled their bodies and left them by the side of the trail to be no more. Because I knew you'd never be back for the scent of spring to settle in your pink shell ears and short-sleeved shirt and the creases of your buff-worn Durangos. I came to taunt your three o'clock in the mornings and your Thursday afternoons and your memories that can never have her back again in living mane and breathing barrel. Only her red reins are left curling in the cupboard. But you will never have another trail again for I came to take them away. |