The Poem a Day challenge today was to write a piece about the word “post.”

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Marked Measures of Death’s March

Walking what I remember to be
desert roads, cloudy but paved,
layers of dust bracketing charcoal,
and as a child, remembering ranch

fences, posts at regular intervals,
counting time and space in a day
broken by too many micro moments
of doubt. The posts work, providing

false assurance, brokering chunks
of lanky steps, and I’m done, remembering
now, an emptiness, ripping pains, merely
a prologue to destitute soaking old, blue
nerves on this miserable leather couch.

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