Arkansas River Near Leadville, CO. Credit: USFWS
I am the keeper
of limbic cryptoglyphs
of all immensely fragile
and beautiful things
surreptitious traumas
salt-stained sorrows
Locks and mementos
burdened by history
epitaphs written in
blood of my ancestors
incorporeal touchstones
to a fateful past
Singing bowl moans,
bones refracture,
and ashen losses unveil
all these men ever want to
holdfast are fantasies,
embroidered abstractions,
questlines in unfeeling,
lifeless worlds of murder
Strategies deployed
in a game of abuse
lost in an oubliette
of broken promises
each door and
window a deception,
opening to apathy,
with illusory joy
always out of reach
He alters the earth under me
reduces me to a thing, an idea –
angel trapped in a cycle of forgetting
cyborg glitched by programming
a seeker forever searching for a path –
mirror to his vanity that cannot
reflect enough glory to be cherished
Until the day I awoke
petrichor leading me
to the hallowed river –
it was conquered,
torn asunder in war
dam near stole
its roaring fury
My peripatetic soul
nurtures its wilderness,
its forward motion
flowing into a future
heartbeats riverside
snow-packed source
from the Rockies
to its wide-mouth
confluence and,
eventually, to the sea
Linked to dVerse Poet’s Pub.
Chromapoetica 
A beautiful awakening to the hallowed river and discovery of the journey, back to one’s beginnings, our soul’s cornerstone. I admire your writing Anna. Hope you are safe and well.
My goodness, some really fantastic imagery here! 💝I love; “Singing bowl moans,” and “My peripatetic soul nurtures its wilderness, its forward motion.” 🙂
I really love the river as a metaphor… how it is both still and moving… I can imagine both standing there watching and to sail with it to the sea. As usual, I am amazed with some of your unique word choices…
limbic cryptoglypghs
embroidered abstractions
I tie it back to the beginning.. to the ancestors and to a life-ending in the sea.
Powerful writing. What stands out for me:
“cyborg glitched by programming
a seeker forever searching for a path –
mirror to his vanity that cannot
reflect enough glory to be cherished”
I loved the rhythm of flowing repetition, sort of reminded me of Coltrane Giant Steps wall of sound, difficult to strain the meaning, except in the the puncuated last line, where we all end up anyway somehow, fle like I had to read it aloud in my poor approximation of a Scottish accent. dunno why. But really loved this, truly.