Beth Camp Historical Fiction

Sunday, July 20, 2008

In the Black Hills . . .

In the Black Hills near Devil’s Tower,
I climb down a mountain trail,
ignoring a raven
who brushes across my path
three times.

A prayer bundle bag hangs from a pine tree.
I circle it reverentially and leave quietly.
A cloud of yellow butterflies
swirls ahead of me
on the trail.


This week's prompt from Sunday Scribblings is one word: ghost. I started by writing "I have never seen a ghost." Then this poem found me, and I remembered this day's hike in the heat of a summer pine forest.

7 comments:

  1. oh that's lovely, so atmospheric

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  2. Beautiful... I felt like I was there!

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  3. beautifully picturesque post!!!

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  4. Anonymous5:51 PM

    Yu said so much in so few words. A lovely piece

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  5. This has such a haunting sense of significance of the raven crossing three times, of the prayer bundle and the swirl of butterflies, a significance only intuited, not understood. And I can almost smell those warm pines. This is a lovely poem!

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  6. Anonymous10:35 PM

    Ooh, I like this. At first I thought it should go on longer. I wanted it to. So I read it again to make sure, and again several times, fast, slow, medium, until I felt the fullness of it sufficiently and quieted down from it completely.

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  7. That is very nice. I like how the crow is giving a sign after leaving devils tower. Everyone should be so honorable about other's prayers.

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