I was casually listening to the radio one afternoon and listening to a fascinating story told by an old homesteader called Philip Antonelli of Silverton, Colorado in the depression era. His tale recounted an episode when a severe tornado hit the town and nearly swept most of everything away. Life was certainly hard for 19th century settlers, and nature wasn't always in concord with the intentions and plans of folks who settled there, whatever their business. Anyways, this tale inspired a short 'visionary' poem in me, brief but rhythmical and of a somewhat mystical account of a small western township hit by a natural disaster. In my poem the tornado sucks the life out of the entire population and leaves only dry bones buried in sand. Many years later these remains are rediscovered by an archeologist who 'paints them red' or brings them back to life... pieces their story back together as a symbolic form of resurrection. The title of this piece evokes something distant and faintly historical but unrecognizable (it is actually a Polish name, a foreign name, perhaps an immigrant). The date is merely a random point in past history.
Szczepanski 1895
Painted bones
Singing the sky
Clouds of dust
Spinning.. spinning
Burning earth
Driving wilder
Drying waters
Invoking screams
Houses slashed
In rain of stones
Desert God...
Hard hammering
Thunder spit
Blinding fury
Ate the men
And strangled boys
Gnawed the flesh
Mute women die
Fallen girls
Sank the town
Walls and all
Parched white soil
Sucked love and
Life and left
The white bones
Still, sleeping still
Bones like bread
Brittle crusts
Deep, deep down
Swallowed shards
Of thin skulls.
Digging up
And painting red
Voices past
Whisper gently
Hear us now?
We were few;
Farming, mining
Loving, kind
Too soon
Consumed.
Our parched bones
Recite the light.
All Rights Reserved/Copyright David John Drew 2010.
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