Tussling the Skeletons
How you see bones on the dry ground depends on whether you are alone or with your son.
Prairie My Heart
The wind came along and lifted my
Heart from behind picket fence bones
And cracked open my chest like a birdcage.
It left it there on the autumn prairie grass
Like a buffalo, arrow-rattled but still beating.
All my low passions set abloom among
Wild valley air. All my little truths ablaze
Like cigarette fire on the old farmers road.
I’ve always dreamed of conviction, but
Settled for more questions.
Entertaining the questions after that.
Take that peregrine squawk singing on the
Morning air, for example. Why and why
And what is the why from which it ends?
I gathered the folds of my heart,
Stuffed them back into my chest.
The sky became peregrine.
The world peregrine and squawk and slow
Fires smoldering every which way.
In Praise of What Is Gone
Bone-dust of little fish and snakes
Along the riverrun, sun-splayed in
Haphazard formation, in memoriam
Of when the waters were high.
Nothing is remembered much longer
Than bones on the riverbank or a rock
In a sunny spot on the roadside.
But my son tussles the skeletons with
Eyes that have never seen such a sight.
Holds breath and doesn’t blink as if
Afraid he’ll miss something.
And he might, as we all do all the time.
Tossing off one moment for the next,
Nothing much remembered to save room
For something else.
“Let’s take them home,” he says.
I gather the bones in my hand and align
Them in the flat of my palm.
“Good thing we found them,” he says,
“Or they’d be lost forever.”
We walk home through the forest,
My son dancing along the path before me.
He plucks a rock from mud, throws it to a
Sunny place in the woods, and dances right along.
Spencer K. M. Brown is an award-winning poet and novelist. He is the author of the novels Move Over Mountain and Hold Fast and the poetry collection Cicada Rex. He lives in the foothills of North Carolina with his wife and two sons.
“Good thing we found them, or they’d be lost forever”. Great line, just like a child would say. Great read. Thanks.