Queen Anne’s Lace.
Grown in odd groups. Five, seven-never two.
The clumps and the spaces between.
The Voids
separate and merge together with the wind
to form the appearance of an eye socket.
Skinless Heads stare
as I walk the deer path.
A Young Buck’s antlers.
Bones on a technicality. The owner chews and stares at me while lying smack in the middle of a tree trunk split in half by years of deer stomps.
“Hey Buddy, I need to walk there. Can you get up?”
My voice, singular in its humanity in these woods, sends a chilly shiver from
crown
to
heel.
He stares from underneath two 8-inch spears on his head. Only two points, not worth the kill if that’s all you care about. I keep walking, hoping he can’t smell the fear I have of those two pointy ends. When I a
m ten feet away he huffs and begrudgingly gets up, stopping and standing further down the path.
Doesn’t he know I am going that way? I approach again and he bounds down the hill to try to find the family that abandoned him when those downy nubs turned ivory.
How do they not break their bones doing that?
Mushroom caps.
Wedged inside the rotted trunk of an ancient tree. Half smashed by a hoof. The smell is more fungal and less decomp so I keep going.
Sticks that lost their bark a long time ago.
Excitement!
Is that a Femur?
A Tibia?
Has it been pilfered from a grave in the nearby cemetery.
I envision a landslide pulling the creaky ground open like a parlor’s pocket door.
Oh, no, it is just a stick.
Styrofoam bowls with remnants of KFC Mashed Potatoes stuck at the bottom.
Could that be a Baby’s skull?
It’s small so maybe. Perhaps it came from that empty car seat I passed on my way down these woods lacking a man-made trail.
Heh. Now there is a Meghan-made trail.
Only the deer, squirrel, and other woodland creatures witness our sins.
Fortunately, unfortunately, it’s just trash.
Pale dappled October light.
Filtered through the red, yellow, and orange leaves when the sun is at a severe angle in the southern sky.
It will
get more
severe
yet.
We try not to think about these things while we plan for them nevertheless.
Animal Bones.
Eyes wide and scanning.
Any more nearby?
Was this dropped by a clumsy hawk?
Do clumsy hawks ever even grow up and out of the eyas stage?
Is it really from an animal? I snap a picture and ask facebook.
Human Bones?
I am sure that human bones look like bones when you’re by yourself walking in the forest.
But I wouldn’t know.
Yet.
Wood Shed Writers 
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