Lingering Puzzles
..
We puzzle out the meaning of meshed lines.
We tease out riddles, reading like a sleuth.
The Druids hid by keeping sacred signs
Unwritten in a code that held their truth
Inviolate. The spoken-only breath
Of teachings, once the voices that knew
Them pass away, locks knowledge into death
And makes their code unbreakable. The true,
No matter how unshakeable, is lost
Forever when the beards of frost can speak
No longer in that winter dark has crossed
With ice paralysis. Rhymed lines oblique
In their interpretation are the runes
Left, easier than hieroglyphs in dunes.