Keeper of the Bones

                         By Rudolph Lewis

Spring has come, the tree flowers

in my backyard. I’m off to church

where no compromise, no forgiveness,

no mercy was the order of the day.

In this museum, mausoleum

I am the overseer of the remains—

skulls stacked neatly like books,

brittle bones of family, of neighbors.

It’s not the work I dreamed

when I was a child, filled with hope.

Death memories crowd out dreams—

in gardens, bedrooms, on highways

machetes shatter bone, shear muscle,

children brains thrash on holy walls.

“Sin is real. It is bitter. It's a fire,”

an archbishop speaks of  Satan’s work.

Nothing’s left on which dogs feast

or flies blow and maggots nest.

Yet hell lives on in hearts—the world

outside forgets the skeletal dead.

Brutal inquisition, subtle torture, ice

picks in the eyes of despised humanity,

clubs, knuckle dusters, guillotines live.

The self disappears in stages like flesh.

An old man with only a few years,

I’ll too join the ancestors to find out

whether the dead will rise like Christ

to lead us heaven bound for eternity.

Until I sprout wings in another dream

I remain vigilant as keeper of the bones.