Necessary Shape
—Skeletons—
I found a weather-whitened bone and thought
The earth had finished with its difficult art.
Yet nothing in that chalk remembered death.
It held an order drought could not erase,
A hush no weather ever learned to break.
Thereafter skeletons appeared in all.
The river journeyed by a bed unseen.
Blind roots drank darkness, lifting it as bloom.
The hawk entrusted emptiness with flight.
Night's constellations kept their ancient joints,
Though no hand fastened heaven into place.
Then language bared its marrow.
Bone never waited for the flesh to fail.
The flesh was only bone becoming seen.
Whatever lasts is scaffolded by silence;
The hidden shape rehearses every bloom.
Words fell away like leaves from autumn speech.
Grammar remained, unwearied by the tongue.
The poem shed its music line by line,
Yet something still upheld its vanished song.
I looked again at bone.
It was not what survived.
It was what every living thing obeyed
Before the blossom trusted light,
Before the river entered its own bed,
Before the bird discovered how to fall
Without surrendering the law of flight.
Since then, when beauty startles me to stillness,
I seek no relic hidden in its light.
The blossom never carried spring.
Spring carried blossom into sight.
Every shadow keeps the shape
Its brightness cannot hold.
Bone was never what remained—
Only what life borrowed
To become visible.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a
Premium Membership.
