Remnants of a Season

By Karen StevensonRemnants of a misty moisty morning walk...a deer skull, lichen, autumn leaves, and a nest. Remnant...remembering...a fading season, an empty nest, and bones. A tree covered in the feathery blue-green-gray lichen, a nest fallen from a tree, snagged by a low-lying leaf-bare bush, and the bare skull, lying in a bed of orange-red leaves of a skunkbush sumac, littered with Ponderosa pine needles, its empty eye socket staring at me.Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Women Who Run with the Wolves) defines bones as "the indestructible soul-spirit, the indestructible aspect of the Wild Self, the instinctual nature, the criatura dedicated to freedom and the unspoiled, that which will never accept the rigors and requirements of a dead or overly civilizing culture." I hold a stick with lichen clinging to it, autumn leaves, the nest, and now the skull. A light sleet pelts my hat and patters on my hood in the stillness of the draw. I follow a trail of bones, remnants of a pelvis, shattered femur, then vertabrae, one by one, leading me out of the draw and into the open meadow. Clarissa Pinkola Estes: "Within us is the Old One who collects bones to preserve that which is in danger of being lost to the world - the bones of the criatura, the bones of our ancestors, the bones of our stories--awakened by song, poetry, dance--the bones are our soul, the soul of one, the collective soul of a people..." I top out of the draw, leaving the trail of bones. The north wind is creating a layer of frost on the trees and in the air. Soon, inside my warm house, the first snow of the season falls and I lay out my treasures from the morning walk, pondering the remnants of a season.I am inspired to read poetry, to listen to a Beethoven sonata, to write, to sing, to dance over the bones. It is a good day to work at gathering bones.