Broken Teeth
Perched high on a solitary hill
Overlooking a wide and snakey river
Stood a row of broken teeth
Grinning no longer,
Each one a reminder
Of short and brutal lives.
They spoke of those who came
To tame and till these fertile fields.
They named their towns
After those they left behind,
Paisley, Dundalk, Dunkeld,
Inverhuron, Lorne, Kincardine.
The familiar ring to the names
Reminders of why they left
And why they came.
Years of long neglect,
The rage of summer storms
And wintery frozen gales
Had turned those white markers
To mostly broken sentinels
No longer at attention
But lying on the ground
As if their owners had fallen
From the sky.
When I first sought to find
The source of those jagged stones,
I came upon a scene of chaos
That once had been ordered rows
Of granite guardians
Standing at attention.
Now they lay like fallen soldiers
Left on the field to die.
The irony was not lost.
I traced the names and dates
Worn thin and nearly erased
I began to think of their stories.
My fingers followed faint letters
That marked tragically brief lives,
The space between birth and death
Measured often in months or days.
So many children
Newly birthed
Then just as newly laid to rest.
Surnames repeated
With scarcely a season between
Gave witness to the ravages
Of unchecked disease
And bitter winters following failed crops.
I began to imagine life that grew
On the river’s far side,
Where roots finally took hold
To fulfill the dream
And inherit the promise
That sailed across the sea.
They still carried their dead
Across the muddy river,
Climbed the hill
To plant their sorrowful burdens
Among those who once sailed with them.
Then on white marble rune-stones
They etched brief stories,
That named the names
And marked the dates,
Sent prayers heavenward
And add new teeth
To rise and fall
Broken
Like all the rest.
