Issue 12
Only
Jeffrey Alfier
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Ruins of Karlsberg Castle, Homburg
Though woodsmen now mark well this timbered path,
troops once read this ground like necromancers.
Near trees you'd swear were half old as God,
two centuries of falling leaves have sunk
the castle archways into jagged frowns
where French soldiers came to torch German pride.
Wildflowers and mice are left the heirs
to petty princes who left no vestige
of one thousand horses they once ruled here,
and moss is intimate reclamation
of what the revolutionaries burned.
High up, aircraft leave ice crystal footprints,
and your path home is all a dead reckon
through this intimate fatigue we call Earth.
~Jeffrey Alfier
Jeffrey Alfier is a technical writer living in Bechhofen, Germany. Publication credits include Border Senses, Columbia Review, Poetry Greece, Stolen Island Review, The Green Tricycle, The Richmond Review, and
Valparaiso Poetry Review. Email.
© 2003 by Jeffrey Alfier. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.