The Poetry Society

I had to go on

without me,

let the horse

pick its way

on the glitters

of gradient,

the nameless paths

of the ice melt.

I was the ghost

of a devotion,

head bowed

without a prayer.

The chalk

of a small town

frayed into rock.

A dog barked,

tireless as the creak

of a wheel.

We forded the sun

on the ridge,

my sad bones

sunk in their sack

as the long bones

stepped delicately

out of their own

shadow.