Long Femur Poems
Long Femur Poems. Below are the most popular long Femur by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Femur poems by poem length and keyword.
If function is king, then there aren’t any Types,
but the living show us that’s simply not true.
The class tree is ordered according to forms
and not by the functions a critter can do.
So here’s a conundrum you might find odd:
a superclass known by the name Tetrapod.
Vertebrates these, the four-legged animals:
reptiles, amphibians, and also mammals.
Dinosaurs found here and therefore the birds;
The scope of this superclass: rather absurd.
A feature that all of these share in common:
Four pentadactyl limbs, from the top to the bottom.
Think humerus, radius/ulna, phalanges,
or femur, tibia/fibula, toesies.
All of these critters, extinct and alive
share a limb bone pattern of one, two, and five.
I know that you’re thinking I’m proving the point:
With all that evolving, we must Darwin anoint!
The fittest survive, “Change or Die!” what they say
So why does that one-two-five get in the way?
Are you telling me that to swim, run, or fly
that the one-two-five pattern is the best of all tries?
In bats, five fingers prominent, birds show just two,
But during development, all five are in view.
If you look at a horse or a pig, it’s a ruse!
But in the embryo, those bones will fuse.
No matter the adapting it takes to survive,
They always start out with the one, two, and five.
Three hundred sixty-five million years past:
that’s when the pentadactyl pattern was cast.
What in the world caused this weird isolation?
Such fixation defies Darwin’s explanation.
The limb is just one of the numerous features
that uniquely identify classes of creatures.
An a-functional body plan resisting change…
Even Gould veered from Darwin, finding this rather strange.
A momentary apocalypse
Or something very near to that
For an instant, I am the only survivor.
The road stretches before me like an exposed
Femur, straight and bare
As if all the cars had died, decayed, and been carried off by vultures on the side of the highway
Nothing more than roadkill.
There is a strange, solitary silence
That echoes in my chest 72 times per minute
As if I am the only creature breathing in 196.9 million square miles
A sacred and fleeting feeling.
And if I were alone
The last of the human race, would I cross the finish line
Or sit and watch the sun sink into flames for the last time?
("Eye of Storm", original encaustic, 2017)
Epiphany
I’ve had two major epiphanies in my life,
And I figure three is all we really get.
So far they are following a pattern
Of thesis/antithesis
So I assume the third will be some kind of synthesis.
The first involved pain.
When I broke my femur in a climbing accident
I had some time to consider pain
And I concluded that it can always be worse
As in, it’s never a full 10 on the scale.
The second was a couple of years later
With my second climbing accident
When I did a 40 foot backwards swan dive
Landing on rock, cracking my helmet
Instead of my skull.
What I learned when I woke up several hours later
In a hospital far from home
Was that no matter how much pain we experience
When we die it ends
As if it never had been…
I think the third when it comes at last
Will be something along the lines;
I really don’t know sh*t
And never have
Despite a lifetime thinking otherwise.
I think it’s an epiphany
To enter an open door with
Regardless of what’s come before
Somehow knowing it’ll all be familiar
The way dreams are, just before we awake.
(5/27/24)
Mao I
(After an ink drawing by Mao I, Song dynasty, c. 1100
in the Freer Gallery of Oriental Art)
Faded, brown, discrete, as flowers pressed
in some antique book or magazine suggest
an intimate mood--fleeting, flown,
perennial, between timeless print grown
meaningless, his femur sausage-linked
bamboo or supple joint-less trout, lightly inked,
survived the arson and the coup d'etats.
We find no window-sized Madonna
or noble in fluffed moustache
winking across the room at a burgher
winking back.
Here on a silk pane, light-boned swallows
toss in the wind-sifted willows,
While at wind-arrested edge of flight one flies
caught forever turning in his almond eyes.
I used to pass an empty house
On my way home from school
I was only ten years old then
I heard that older people lived
There
But I never saw them.
Found old photos
Showed them to Dad
Where’d you get them he asked?
Found them in the old house I said
Then he and mother spoke
In the privacy of their bedroom
I saw the shadows of their arms
Move
And point toward my room
This was the 1950’s
Times were different
And some things
Were just never talked about.
When the old house was torn down
I went inside
To look
And to explore
Kicking an odd piece of dirt
The soft rotted wood moved
And something flipped up
Bones
Some as big as my leg.
But it was the damp smell of decay
That I remembered
Vividly
Even at that time
When anything new
Was always exciting
This was different
I had not experienced anything like this before
But I would years later
Ten years later
A decade to wait.
I was In Country
Two tours
Separated from my group
Never found
Missing in action
But really I’m dead
Been like this for years
All that’s left
Of me
Are bone fragments
Part of a femur
And a scratch of faded cloth
Scattered over a vast green landscape
At the edge of a jungle.
Occasionally I hear digging sounds
Not the heavy shovel kind
But a gentle probing
Of earth
Someone intent on finding something
But not wishing to disturb
They haven’t found me
Yet
So I still wait.
I never got used to the damp smell of decay
But just the same I take solace
In that smell
Because it reminds me of
Long ago
When I was just a schoolboy
Coming home.
"A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P"
"I" before "E" except after "C"
"Two plus two equals four.
Three plus one equals four also for sure."
"In fourteen hundred ninety two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue"
"North America, South America, Europe, Australia,
Africa, Antarctica and the seventh continent Asia."
I've covered all subjects ranging from reading to geography
as examples of education through the use of poetry.
I've always harbored a theory secretively
that we could better education through the use of poetry.
It's like that song redundantly playing in your head to you.
When you're exposed to poetry it stays with you.
I've personally termed poetry "The Mind's Mental Glue"
Here's another example of education through poetry
for those who seek a medical degree.
"The leg's skeleton is composed of the femur, crus and foot bones,
but the foot also has detailed bones of its own."
Jade is a wheelchair racer, distance events,
Competing in the 400m, 800m, 1500m T54,
Born with her femur missing she attended,
Ormesby School which is in Middlesbrough.
From there she enrolled in Prior Pursglove,
A college in Guisborough which took her,
Onto NE’s University of Teesside and Law,
Where she learns legal mechanisms, rules.
While Jade was at school on a sports day,
Tanni Grey-Thompson visited and spotted,
This talent bursting with energy and spirit,
And allowed her to try a racing wheelchair.
Ian Thompson, Tanni’s husband, on that day,
Was also present, and, being a good doctor,
And knowledgable about different chair types,
Was able to advise on posture and comfort.
Only a few weeks later, Tanni was teaching
Jade how to race, every day and in every way,
Such that Jade fought at sports meets to win,
The sprint and also long distances: stickability.
New Zealand and Christchurch, IPC Worlds,
Sprung Jade into the limelight, finished fifth,
At 200m, and she made the London Paras,
But failed to win a podium medal: 3 secs out.
In the Great North Run in the junior event,
Which was only 2k long, Jade won this jaunt,
In 4 mins 12. In 2013 she made the Worlds
In Lyon, coming fourth in the 400m, middle.
Then Swansea in 2014 and the Europeans,
And for the 800m Jade came 2nd, a silver,
In the 1500m she came 3rd with a bronze,
So her first internationals did sail her boat.
Same year, but at the Commonwealth’s,
Jade won the bronze in the 1500m chase,
To take her onto Rio bold, but there she,
Didn’t manage to procure a podium stop.
It's nine years in a row of continuous crisis
lost in the wilderness of a dry Oasis
on all long bones is the constant emphasis
for a condition which began as Tuberculosis.
The pain and discomfort, too much to bear
she is too ready for the worst to worry and fear
the weather smells nice but will mock and share
neighbours always smile but absolutely don't care.
The body fights just to prove it's a weaker host
medications and herbs, wholly trusted to do the most
yet, her days are numbered, she now communes with a ghost
the traffic light turns red and Earth, no longer her post.
For a forty year old, this shouldn't be the end
I hold back the tears, I cannot pretend
my Aunt's life, God, please extend
all the Angels you have, oh Lord, gather and send.
Counting in weeks, she may not have two more
misfortune slowly acts on eventuality's rumour
a silent killer eats, evident by a weaker femur
a terrible relapse and this time, it's more than one tumour.
9th. August. 2021
This or That, Vol 5 Poetry Contest- Holding back Tears.
Sponsored by Edward Ibeh.
4th Position
I used to pass an empty house
On my way home from school
I was only ten years old then
I heard that older people lived
There
But I never saw them.
Found old photos
Showed them to Dad
Where’d you get them he asked?
Found them in the old house I said
Then he and mother spoke
In the privacy of their bedroom
I saw the shadows of their arms
Move
And point toward my room
This was the 1950’s
Times were different
And some things
Were just never talked about.
When the old house was torn down
I went inside
To look
And to explore
Kicking an odd piece of dirt
The soft rotted wood moved
And something flipped up
Bones
Some as big as my leg.
But it was the damp smell of decay
That I remembered
Vividly
Even at that time
When anything new
Was always exciting
This was different
I had not experienced anything like this before
But I would years later
Ten years later
A decade to wait.
I was In Country
Two tours
Separated from my group
Never found
Missing in action
But really I’m dead
Been like this for years
All that’s left
Of me
Are bone fragments
Part of a femur
And a scratch of faded cloth
Scattered over a vast green landscape
At the edge of a jungle.
Occasionally I hear digging sounds
Not the heavy shovel kind
But a gentle probing
Of earth
Someone intent on finding something
But not wishing to disturb
They haven’t found me
Yet
So I still wait.
I never got used to the damp smell of decay
But just the same I take solace
In that smell
Because it reminds me of
Long ago
When I was just a schoolboy
Coming home.
A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course.
Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts
carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked.
Under watchful eyes the young medics
separate muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels, hesitant scalpels
seek out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet, ingrained in the tissue
I sense residual shades of a former life,
seaside postcards, old photographs,
perhaps campaign ribbons, odd tokens
amongst yellowed newspaper clippings,
all briefly surface as conjectured images
beneath a probing knife.
The gray flesh retains its personal history,
I imagine that behind the knee
there is a wife, children, and a separation
all spectrally etched between femur and tibia.
Much of the ensuing bone-whittling years
are demonstratively scored
across a formaldehyde and jelled narration.
The students suppose they dissect a limb,
while I notion that I turn over bloodless pages,
of an unwritten story,
and now the last few attached ligaments
remain as threads that speak at last
of a long journey’s end.