Gift to the Council by Gabriel Sayers

Gift to the Council

I was gifted to the council in sweetgrass,

my ribs displayed finely in the October sun.

This child had been birthed from the corroded artery,

finally opened, from a school in the valley’s heart

where a cross sat bright in the evening smoke.

Deacons passed, open-armed,

wearing flowing robes of ivory in the hallway.

Children wore what they were told,

spoke silently in the catacombs like mice,

brown-footed over the crabgrass at night,

swapping their license of family for God.

This hellish shell game rotated for years,

tongues pricked, English the only tongue left.

It was empty for years in town;

every mailbox held a spirit in its mouth.

Soon they would reach the country,

no longer ensnared in that tight net.

But would anyone believe

the rumours of a spirit?