Boneyard
Jean Rohe
I'm gonna walk down the juniper trail in the sunrise
Stumble out past the cottonwoods,
Manzanita, Ponderosa pine
I'm a stranger in my own dark country
Every dusty footstep catches me off guard
As the aspen wind calls out to me:
Come on down to the boneyard
Come on down to the boneyard
'Cause I'm a seeker, a sleuth, I'm a scout on a search for clues
I'm gonna dig through the fence posts and rope
Bones and blood, chrome and rusty horseshoes
Down beneath all the gravel and the gristle
That someone else once thought it prudent to discard
I'll put the pieces back together
Down in the boneyard
All of a sudden, an eruption
Turns the mountains inside out
Spewing centuries of stone,
the boneyard's souls are tossed about
And now it's the dawning of a different morning
Dinosaurs, the US Army,
Phantom ranch hands hitch the team
People gathering the huckleberry
In tule baskets, ceremony
Summertime
I'm a stranger in my own dark country
Every dusty footstep catches me off guard
As the aspen wind calls out to me:
Come on down to the boneyard
Leave no trace, says the sign at the trailhead
But who escapes from this land, so wild and hard?
That holds millennia in sand and rock and water
And takes a part of me, and soothes me where I'm scarred
All the ghosts know where to find me
I tilt my head in fond regard
Down in the boneyard
The boneyard
Down in the boneyard
