I strode into the forest, mindless

of the shadows. Trees stood

like pillars supporting

a darkly marbled cupola;

trunks each a totem’s height

wide. My full clan joined

hand to hand to hand

could not have bounded the slightest.

I walked with lashes

kissing my eyes shut

for it was black as corruption

and my tracks were still

apparent in the pine needle dunes.

My movements gradually became

tenebrous, my flesh rugose,

my eyelids fused. Veins

corded along my body

were split

into viscid vines; each hair plucked its freddom

and scurried my miles

of coagulating rind.

Soon I stretched above

the holy shroud and sipped

from the nectar cup of the moon.

Now I tremble,

crippled by the slaughter

of the ephemeral tribe I

once thought eternal.

Now I weep, as my kin are

hacked down by Manifest Destiny

I inhale nothing but

the effluvium of charring

corpses; imbibe nothing but

their spilt pneuma.

I endure, scarred and

beleaguered but never broken,

where, in days

dead, the capital of a

great nation towered,

now merely

toppled pillars. Power’s

retrospective sorrow does little

to engender asylum

for the next rash

conquest.