A glance Backwards

When the warm brown Tenessee mud reaches appalachian ankles, I can smell the smoky musk of woodstove chimneys and hickory fires.

It seems another lifetime, amber shadows and the boy with knots of honey brown tangles. The leather-browned bare feet.

We used to makes bows and arrows and arrows of twisted cords and turkey feathers, of chisel and flint stone.

I still have the hand-carved comb you fashioned out of mother-goat's hip-bone. Old Broken Horn, deceased after the agony of child birth.

I close my eyes and only see the pink birthing sacks glistening  mucus lining. Kids are magnificent, scrambling on four akward poles and bleating breaking silence as you wipe their black tar mouths free from phlegm.

I now descend down New York streets and sit whilst sirens wail and people chatter beneathe parasols cupping the still-war coffee mugs between my stiff fall fingers.

Sometimes I still smell the smoke from woodstove fires, sometimes I can still feel jagged grooves in almond stones.