memory

Some days it feels like every print I make in earth is shadowed by another,
lighter step,
like I am hunted, followed
and the shudders roll and shrink beneath my skin but I just smile
and say hi again
it doesn’t do to snub the dead.
What a strange thing memory is
and what strange things we do to shirk its pale cold step
I am warm under the earth I am
sleeping
dreaming of nothing
why would you rattle my dirt
why walk over scorched bridges
and crypts long sealed?
And yet my cold dead frame begins
to shiver.