There’s a cracked old deer bone
in a small field by the stream.
It’s been there for years
and every few months or so,
it moves a few feet. Maybe
a season goes by and it’s buried
in the grass and wildflowers, but
when autumn comes again,
the bone resurfaces like driftwood
from an ocean turning brown.
I wonder what coyote picks it up
only to spit it out a few steps later.
After the bleached taste
of years and sun-dried blood
on brittle bone, does he go
to the stream to drink away
the taste or let it linger, a reminder
of all the songs he still can sing?
3 Comments | Filed under: neighborhood trails and poems | Tagged: coyotes, napowrimo
Nice. A lot of bone references in poems these days seem gratuitous, but here, the bone is so real it is mythic.
Thanks, Dave. It’s a very real bone. I even went to check to see if it was still there before I posted this. It took a while to find since the grass is getting high, but it was there, a few feet away from where I last noticed it. Thanks for you comment.
And another good one. Meanwhile, Dave has me noticing how many bones show up in my poems.