If it seems we’re wandering, we are. Just passed the last gas station (it reminded us) this side of the mountains. There’s too much scenery to see while driving so we pull over to take in what will in a moment leave us behind. From a turn-out we watch a large green lake full of summer algae muting the water’s sunlight relay as it receives our witness with indifference as though we were long dead, our bones scattered in a high valley over a ridge no one climbs now. We recall finding a box of books, poems left blind and forgotten in the back of a closet, picking one at random from another century when people read books. Vaguely curious we turn its yellowed pages, reading a few lines until they start to flesh out. Some are silent as last year’s news, some humming low like a refrigerator, a dishwasher. Some scream at us, one slaps our face. We read them into hearing, into voices overheard, some addressing us as if they knew us. Bands of amateurs trying out tunes they can barely carry, church choirs practicing in sections, jazz bands in joyful disharmony. A piano turner at work. A valley of dry bones intermingled with Ezekiel’s pulling themselves apart then together as new bodies gathering purpose, finding another voice in us.
Love it. We are Ezekiel’s dry bones, raised up through the enduring power of literature. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” I can’t think of a better message right now.
The Dog Star 
2 Responses to “Dry Bones”
Love it. We are Ezekiel’s dry bones, raised up through the enduring power of literature. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” I can’t think of a better message right now.
Thanks, Craig. What poems do for readers, readers do for poems.