Relics

Scrabbling bones together like a gathering of river stones

Bones become sacred

Human remains, memories of cartilage

Piled centuries high

Skulls and leg remnants begin to tell the stories of before.

I am the once-severed arm of a young girl

Scrambling for a foothold in this desert

Where once my enemy chased did not live

I am the fingers of a woman whose knuckles live beneath a flower box

We remember each other through these bones

Through the songs of calcium deficiency and famine strings that strum us into night

We are the gathering of old-timers whose eye sockets tell stories of victory

We are a memory shaped by vertebrae

Clappers of rhythm disassembled by the skeletons of time

I am the keeper of a man whose only hope was grounding toil

Scrubbing my skin with the earth for food

I am the elbow of children whose eyes switched at the thought of cold

I am the shin of garbage collectors building stamina for a city to come

We are a memory shaped by vertebrae

Clappers of rhythm disassembled by the skeletons of time

We are the dissipating by the skeletons of time

We are the dissipating cartilage of our great-grandchildren's memory holding to their sockets by a sinew of hope

Making sense of these bones we reassemble history

Making ancestral tapestries in the shape of retaining walls

We are a memory shaped by a vertebrae

Clappers of rhythm disassembled by the skeletons of time

You are the skin behind the clouds

Source: Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.org, 2005)