This is something that I began over 2 years ago but never liked where it was going. For the past week, I've been taking it out of the drawer and looking at it. Please keep in mind that this is very, very rough, but it is further than I've ever gotten with it.
I would like any and all crits that any are willing to give. It may end up back in the drawer for another 3 years - who knows.
Thanks in advance.
Bones
In late May, they begin coming, and I wake; they will remain until the frost takes the last of the wild ginseng that covers me. They wake me with their shouts of hallelujahs and songs to Jehovah, with their language of unfamiliar tongues. They kiss snakes and that puzzles me. They call this place Singing Hills Holiness Camp.
The singing hills lie atop a sandstone ridge that’s said to have been laid down by a huge river from the northeast which dumped its load of sand and silt into a shallow tropical sea millions of years ago. Instead, they actually rest on a younger ridge of sandstone, laid down by a river that flowed when dragonflies with three foot wingspans and salamanders fifteen feet long inhabited this same forest, only then it was made of ferns instead of sycamores and pines.
Although they believe they were the first to name this place, it was long known as the singing hills. The only time there is singing now is when they come. The voices of Mhweewa (wolf) and Mkwa (black bear) were silenced years ago. So, they sing of damnation, salvation, and redemption; they kiss snakes to prove their faith, their immortality, and their stupidity. I used to think that those who died here would stay and continue to sing, but I never hear them only those who come and go.
The children chatter like squirrels and yip like coyotes, and I love their songs best of all. During the day they run free turning brown as berries under the warm sun as they dig into mother earth searching for treasures of a long lost past. . But at night when the hallelujahs begin and the snakes are brought forth, they begin to tremble and cry. Gone are their sweet songs, and I get angry. I begin chanting a song much older than them … one older than all of us. A song passed from ancestor to ancestor. Soon others like me join in, and our song grows electric as the god of the sky joins the goddess of the earth and together we drown out the hallelujahs and the Jehovahs, and the children join in.
Children always know the songs of the singing bones.
Words, copyright Cher Cunningham, 2006