Gravestones

I wonder how the gravestones 

have worn in that cemetery

in Rising Son, behind 

The Church of the Brethren.

Mom and Dad and his parents,

two sets of Reverend and Missus

Hoot.  There’s cornfields and woods

and deer trails across the graves,

the granite holding minerals 

the deer try to pry loose with

their tongues.  I wonder if the deer

see the ghosts – the ones content 

to be where they are, the others

in a disarray of time and place,

the refusal of acceptance.  I have

not visited in years and worry 

about remembering how to get 

there.  In my heart it’s just a step

away – the casket, the preacher,

the living and the dead, the drive

away, the look back.  The corn 

and trees and wind.

 

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Fear

 I fear my grandchildren are beyond 

the redemption of the hunt.

Which worries me.

They may never know the primal truths

that hone a soul to be a person  – 

hard enough but more so when removed from trees

and hills and stream, learning game,

reading sign. 

All necessary to being better today than yesterday. 

Lessons that can be taken in.

I hunt and fish religiously.

In ways sacred, where knowing and honoring

and deciding in a split-second matter 

as the metaphysical realities they are.

Metaphors full of meaning the wilds give 

what no cities can.  I worry what kind of stories 

my grandchildren will tell sitting around a fire.

hootism:  for one day . . . i'd like to not waste a word.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com/