POEM: "The Bones Of Fish"

This one could be read in the latest historical context of recent and

on-going searches for lost relatives — but then again, it might not.

 

Indented are the tiny bones

In the hapless fossil record

Vibrating an irritation

Down strange countless years — 

A teenage boy holds

An exceptional surprise

The skeleton remains

Of a nervous spinal system;

Maybe unpredictably

Balanced with a tear

Everyone eschews their memory

Leaves old things undigested —

He feels maybe he can’t love fish

Frantic in understatement

Until he can hear their bones

Perfecting the continuous wave

Man, that system was really working

Crazy and open like a swirling sea

But when waters receded

Landing ancestors high and dry

They gave their augury to the earth

Left their lives behind on stone

Like the teeth of a billion frustrations —

Or nothing if not in the shape of bones.

 

                                                  ©ROB SCHACKNE (2008)

02:41 - Saturday 16 January 2010 - post comment