Ginger Murchison – Ⅳ

On Stone Mountain, 

 

 

 

 

we’d go back toward time when

the world, without footprints, broke open

to the scraggles of leaf and limb with barely

a foothold at hairline cracks in bald, gray stone.

 

We would come with our lunches—him, just a boy,

and me, already the age of labored breathing—

rehearse state capitals, remember Huck, and hide crusts

for whatever had hunkered down waiting for dark.

 

Like grave robbers at the crypts of kings,

we’d stare into pools the color of soot, worlds

set to a different time, the fairy shrimp, ghosts

in chiffon, white as fear, life, sure enough, still

 

pushing out of pre-history, waiting to crawl

out of their tiny seas, nature intent, maybe,

on moving ahead without us, or back. Maybe

the world once looked just like this. Would again.