Bones

They came upon some bones in the forest.
She saw them first in the shadows and thought
they were ferns forcing up fiddleheads from a
bed of leaves. But he saw them first for what
they were, bones of a small creature. It looked
like some carnivores had shared a meal. Hollows
clawed from decaying leaves told a story of a
tragic scene unseen.

He was a police officer who saw beyond the
unseen, to see a crime scene. He had seen this
sort of skeleton before. Here a baby had been
buried, he surmised, in a shallow grave,
un-named, un-sung, and unseen,

eaten by canines, never a memory to anyone except
the woman who drove as far away as she could, and
walked as deep into the forest as she could, to bury
the passion she had held within her for that from
within her she could not keep.

The police officer fell into his wife’s arms and
they cried. They cried a long time. The forest
was too much for them today.

G. Louis Heath retired in May, 2016 from Ashford University, Clinton, Iowa. He has published poems in a wide array of online literary journals, including Verse-Virtual, Poppy Road Review, and Inkstain Press.