Nomad

The wails that disturb very few in their bed Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead * A grave overgrown with deep-rooted weeds No flowers here, no one tending their needs Even the weeds are now wilted through drought And someone below knows it’s time to get out At first the soil heaves and its arid soil cracks Two marble angels have now turned their backs A skeletal hand pushes up from below A cloud hides the moon for the moon mustn’t know Another hand pushes aside broken earth And a part rotted face displays faux grinning mirth One hand takes stock of the other’s third finger The ring rattles bone where the flesh didn’t linger Thus in the gloom of a chilled moonless night Nobody gasps and no-one takes flight The newly raised corpse snubs the night’s frigid bite Leaving its grave to be found in the light His gait expeditious, those aural assaults Drive him apace as direction he courts The wails that disturb very few in their bed Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead For so many weeks a shadowy form Wanders alone like a mourner forlorn Only night people and those that live ‘out’ Bear witness to him as he travels about But always the moon and the stars look away His shadowy form never seen in the day He moves grave to grave with a purposeful gait He will not be beckoned and he will not wait He goes town to town on his skeletal feet By way of the alleyway and unlit street He’ll use any route that is dark and discreet He has no desire, for the living, to meet So many sightings are never relayed Though one ‘lucky’ vagrant’s composure is frayed A cop takes his statement and stands there dismayed He isn’t convinced and he’s hard to persuade The sightings reach fifty across many miles Two drunks are shook by the broadest of smiles “It looked like a skull,” Cyril mutters to Giles, “That’s the last time I go out on the tiles.” Graveyards across the land each get a visit Till one night a priest walking late says, “Who is it?” A shadow-man kneels by a recent dug grave The priest hurries home for he isn’t that brave The wails that disturb very few in their bed Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead With both boney hands on the freshly dug mound The wailing abates and he hears not a sound The shadow man watches a small swirling mist In the shape of a hand that reaches for his The hand of a wife that is so sorely missed The hand draws him in and he doesn’t resist * By day the priest visits the now silent grave The grave of the woman who had been so brave She’d been claustrophobic but still went inside the caves where his daughter was trapped by the tide His daughter was saved but the woman had drowned They knew that no husband would ever be found He died long ago and she’d let it be known She feared an eternity dark and alone And so with the passing of many a night The priest wonders what stopped the wails in the night The wailing, now silent, he never would miss But one night he did hear the sound of a kiss