Thirty Unapologetic Minerals In Bulk Form.

Six Unapologetic Minerals

Markers In Bulk Form.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Thirty

unapologetic

mineral markers
in bulk form
lined the prairie trail,
carefully hand selected
over 200 years ago,
by the sole

survivor of fever
that gripped

his wagonload
full of family

and worldly goods
along the

desert pathways.

He'd sought to

find a better life
and lost six in his hunt,
then marked their

final resting places
with mineral rocks

all blunt, from years

of windstorms.

Strong winds,

hard rain,

and times travailed,
until his own

bleached bones

lay scattered

another sixty miles

further up,
unburied

by the trail.

 

What tales of woe

these rocks could tell

of pioneer children

whose fevers rose

to temperatures

that felt almost

as scalding as

the rocks themselves

beneath the

unforgiving sun.

 

And their dear

mother who fell ill

while caring for them,

Just a Prairie woman who

was unskilled at preventing

the pustulance of death 

from claiming her brood. 

 

Then the father

who had to lay each

under hard scrabbled soil,

with only stones to

mark the point of their

permanent pause

in their journey

to haven.....

which became heaven.

 

Later he  found himself

further down the trail

equally as ill,  weakened

and then succumbing

all alone, with only buzzards

to bear his pall skyward

leaving only a temporal

fetal ball of clothes and bones

near his rotting wagon

that became little more

than a hearse for them all.

 

Each became dust

from long ago,

these explorers

who crossed

into a different

kind of

promised land.

 

Seven unfortunate

humans leached

into the cruel plains
and all that marked

their passing
were thirty

unapologetic

mineral markers
in a tiny stonehenge

encircled above death.

 

©-MFB III