"where the dead have gone to dust"

Reliquary 


No stones mark where the dead have gone to dust 
and dust to air 
                              the soil exhaled
into what was once boundlessly wild.
Fields clipped close, 
                              winding green
around a river dotted by silos.
There’s a plaque on the side of the road—
dates, a few facts, in faded caps— 
                              but the single fact is green 
marbled by pools of shade. 
                              Of the dead, I imagine 
a kernel of bone might remain 
cradled within dark, river-fed roots.
I hold the image in mind as summer grass scintillates. 
And as the image deteriorates, I give in to time
                              and how time unwinds a body 
                              that was never ours.