While Walking Home

While walking home
Through matted woods,
Thick with foliage and life,
I came upon a human skull.
Fragmented,
Half-shattered,
Terrible and Beautiful.
Its hollow socket peered at me
From the earth, and
Its haunting glare froze me,
Consumed me,
And a swell of pity gathered in my breast.
And a thousand moral lessons about life
All eluded me at once.
So we stood –
Locked
in awkward silence.
Its yellow-ochre visage
And its indomitable gaze
Caused my heart to
Falter.
And yet I stood
Staring back
Like Titus in his catacombs
Mourning his fallen brood.

And at last,
The sun began to fall,
And my own self-sense of mortality
Beckoned me
To carry on.
Yet, still I stood,
Resolved,
Patient;
Waiting for a message –
A statement–
Something conclusive,
Profound,
Absolute,
Irrefutable,
Fathomless,
Definitive,
Boundless,
Chaotic,
Immaculate,
And Majestic.
Something,
To take with me.
Some noble truth
to be forever mine.

Then I realized
If this were a badger skull,
I’d be home by now.