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Nov 222015
 

by Lowell Jaeger

 

leonard youngbear says

in the old days there was no such thing

as trash

native camps left ashes only

or bones bits of hide feathers

mounds of buffalo dung

 

what dogs didn’t eat

coyotes did

or wind snow rain

beneath trees and prairie grass

everything from the earth

returned

 

human life too leonard says

should be like that

 

i know i say i’m not afraid anymore

of dying it’s trash

worries me it’s caskets

tin cans foil plastic wrappers

yellow rubber raincoats don’t rot

don’t burn bury them

and something spits them back

 

i’d sooner fall in the wild

where small swallows of me

will swim downstream next time

in the cold eyeball of a fingerling

a morsel of my ragged flesh

fueling the wings of a young bird

learning to fly