Mummy

(I may or may not have written this while driving down scholls in the rain, in the dark, in the silence of the night when the fog hung heavy around my car and I skidded around corners in the collected puddles that huddled there, and I stopped like a culprit at each car that rounded the sides of the hill, caught in the beams of accusatory light - I may have written it on a dime, one that still spins, and I can make neither heads nor tails of it - I may be still writing, because some stories are never finished until they stop beginning, and this may or may not be such a one. I may completely re-write it when I wake in the morning, cold without a fire and only the dust at my side, and contemplate my foolishness at trying. Shikata ga nai. Do svidaniya)

A stranger, wrapped in white, woke

beside me on the road, hoping 

for warmth by the once-fire, 

now reduced to coals.

How he shudders and groans, 

his bandaged-body and tired, old bones.

in the brisk morning breeze, I ask,

what does the mummy desire?

stirring to speak, he glances at me,

and tells me of wars long ago:

battles and fighters in warrior attires

engaged in the hatred of yore

but whose? mine or yours? no,

the avarice of kings paid with the blood

of just beings who craved only the hearth

or the home.

Then on he goes about the gods below

and above in whose sight we marred

the earth we love, and the child whose name

we don't know.

Of sickness to death, of hope and love cleft

in the eyes of the lover and loved.

So what do you need, I ask, if you please?

and he hushes me with a hand, let me speak.

He saddens me with tales of ships with wide sails

white, rife with slavery beneath.

Of pirates and lies, and what lies down,
deep in the oceans of hearts.

and what now, can I offer, I ask, 

my soul suddenly cold.

A little tea and warmth by the fire,

and tales of what, for love, you have sold.

Beneath the white folds of cloth

beneath every one, there's a soul

and one worth dying for,

I reply as the fire sparks its rebirth.