|
|
Skull
An island of trees
in a sea of harvested fields
where I wandered
just looking
for whatever I found,
and on that island
as if beached and stove in
by a freak storm,
wreckage
where the sun fell
through autumn leaves.
No keel,
but bleached ribs,
as if a row boat
had been carted
into this brown wood,
but these were bones,
and around them grass,
unseasonably green,
and no one saw or heard,
as I claimed the massive skull
my treasure for the taking
with its gaping eye sockets
and between them
a ragged hole.
Long after the farmer
and crows and beetles and worms
finished with the horse,
I took home his skull
where it hung from a spike
above my boyhood bed,
sharing a white wall
with a crucifix.
I slept and woke
under their shadows
where they heard
what passed for
my silent vespers
and answered
with silence,
the bone white corpus
and the horsešs skull.
I listened
and saw
what they told
about the architecture
beyond death,
what remains
hung upon nails
against a white wall
or wooden cross,
the bone hard truth
that stares ahead
feeding thought
that may grow
like green grass
among bones.
Lou Masson
|
