That's all she wrote
Of the family plot location
On a road without a name.
Granny Fannie's in Grannis
Is all we knew,
And that woods have swallowed the house
And the family is sad
To see history go
When it is so ripe
And rich to be
Unremembered.
So we headed past Story,
Left behind the rescue ponies,
Down the road full of Jesus' name
And not much else,
Took a sharp turn at Pencil Bluff,
Its windmills and Winnebagos,
Fiddler's Creek, one blink
And you miss it Ink.
A high-pitched ring in Oden
As we crossed a ley line
By Mirror Lake and dragon scales
Breathed across the sky.
Then Mena (Meena),
Noted hometown
Of Lum and Abner
Jot' em Down Store,
To the Assessor
In the Courthouse
Where they still are processing
Properties outside of time
With every plat in Polk County
Documented on its walls
Like antlers to prove
Their Authority
Even as the temporary
Pumpkins that
Offer cookies
Beg to differ.
Their cryptic codes
Are no match for
The cryptid statues
All over town,
A place famous
Less as a County Seat
Than as a Sasquatch
Hot bed,
Where they are spotted
Along the ridge lines
Often heard beating trees,
Interdimensional as cemeteries.
When Grandpa died,
Mom came back home
To give birth.
He is still here, resting
At the Oak Grove Cemetery
Down a long dirt road
With church included,
A number to call "before you dig."
A family of turkeys
Nervously alive
Led us so slowly
And deliberately
To guide us back to joy
From headstones
Where crystals are screwed in
Along a golden road
No one goes down
Without some memory of grief
To stir its dirt
And beat its drum with gravel.
The family land
From the Homestead Act
Was still free of encumbrance
From Weyerhauser Tyson
Though who lives there now
Is still a mystery
Unlike the second cemetery,
Truth finally written into stone
With flies buzz hovering
On leaf blankets over
Unquiet spirits
Where a rabbit hops away.
We looked at every name,
So many so familiar,
The complete unknowns,
Until we reached the last ones
That's where we found Fannie,
In a bounded family plot,
Right as deer ran up to see
From behind the liminal fence
To look at us and wag their tails,
Pausing the timelessness
Of late light in Autumn
Serendipity
Until we could see
How much we're honored
For remembering
Before they gracefully
Glid back into the trees
With barely a ripple in the veil,
Tho we swerved just like them
To avoid armadillos on the road back
And we stopped for puppies to cross
To reach their mother
And, later, braked and prayed
Eyes closed
As by an act of God
We avoided
Hitting some viral deer
Who leaped across the street.
And there were others there
To test and welcome us in symbol,
A road runner at our zero point,
Two white horses in autumnal fire.
The Hunter's Moon pursued us
Glowing yellow as the will
Through the dragon veil
All the way to Vapor City
To show how unconditional love
Is remembered for the collective,
How every leaf that fills with light
Becomes the light itself.
