Cemetery on the Bluff Above Horsethief Lake

By Penelope Scambly Schott

On each rusty post, a tattered American flag
reduced to stick and fuzz,

the Indian warrior doll with his beaded shawl
of red and white and blue,

a ceramic pitcher painted with big pink roses
and no flowers in it,

a round-bellied piggy bank, a plush squirrel,
this one plastic spray of fern—

the only green in dried and golden grasses,
the burrs that leave with us,

a constant wind blowing through the gorge—
and down on the river

the double barge with its white wake—
these are the vessels

that have carried his spirit home.