Stone Columns

Stone Columns
Christopher Bogart

Stone columns are all that is left of ruined mansions.
Bare arms reach to the sky, to hide chipped
and molded capitals.

Their wickedness,
once magnificence upon the landscape,
now festers in pools at their feet.

The buzzing of the cicadas, muffled by moss-draped magnolias,
interrupts the suffocating silence,
where race was once the reason for war.

Dead by the score,
bored by the maggots of lost causes,
they lay in an uneasy rest.

The balm of forgiveness,
forgetfulness seeps out of sight,
lost in fetid pools of live hatred bubbling around the bases.

Generations rise from these pools of kith and kin and klan,
their voices fill the void left by a world lost,
and by our indifference.

Stone columns,
covered in green mold and grey grime,
rocks of ages,
seem somehow taller today.

They appear to be growing,
not likely to go away.