Moses Windwood – Count Them If You Can
By: Emmitt Owens
Buzzard Dust: Copper (W-D-A-R, Dead Air Radio)
(Index #02192026)
Old man, older wife, a promise cracked the math wide open,
Desert night gone cold and quiet, fire burned down to a coal.
He’d learned to live on less and less, stopped hoping, stopped the reaching,
Then a voice split through the dark and asked for something no man could hold.
Count them if you can — every fire in the black,
Every light that ever burned and never once looked back.
That’s the size of what I’m giving, that’s the shape of what’s to come —
More than hands can hold, more than mouths can sum.
He stood barefoot in the cold with his neck bent toward forever,
Lost his place somewhere past a hundred, let the number go.
Not one star apologized for hanging out past reason,
Not one dimmed itself to fit what one old man could know.
Count them if you can — every fire in the black,
Every light that ever burned and never once looked back.
That’s the size of what I’m giving, that’s the shape of what’s to come —
More than hands can hold, more than mouths can sum.
Count them if you can — every fire in the black,
Every light that ever burned and never once looked back.
He’s still counting somewhere, past the edge of what we’ve done —
More than hands can hold, more than the mouths that come.
TumbleDweeeb 
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