Survivors

Miguel Eichelberger Survivors

We are among the survivors. We grow from the ruins Bewildered. Alive feels different.

We are among the gated and counted. Tallied up in the smoke of desire All tangled in wire, cut, and run. We throw arms around shoulders And help. We connect through the eyes, Wrung out smiles we forget what we owned. We stop plucking the straw from our hair And dirt looks all right on the skin If it turns our blue veins black, it makes no matter. At night the songs are composed. And they’re written somewhere deep. On the bones maybe, or in the marrow. There is no paper or ink, but we have muscle, We have blood. Though spare, there’s Enough, more than, to write. I am among the ambitious chroniclers A place of solitude and transcription We pull our songs from the deep places, deeper still They grow from the breaks, And sound like bones and body. They say things we wrote. And more we could not. I am among the free and burdened. I go among the gift of my senses, Who have tasted the valley and summit.