The Bone Drawer

I used to hang these up, upon the wall.
The little bones stark on the linen white.
A faint shadow round each cast by light.
Did you see where one socket looks
As if a clock stopped at the hour of two?
I see such things in bones as once we knew,
When we were nature’s children and before
Well-meaning people told me what to do.
They said that I should lock such things away,
Speak quietly of them, if I spoke at all.



I used to hang these up, upon the wall,
The jaw-bone like a V for victory,
The separated vertebra, cut free.
You see them rise up from the canvas bed,
Like segments of sea-serpents, froze in ice?
My doctors said this hobby wasn’t nice,
That I should press wild flowers as if their life
Meant nothing whereas birds or cats or mice
Were sacred and in earth to be interred
I never killed them though, I loved them all.



I used to hang these up, upon the wall
I’d count each found bone, know its place by sight
By sight and feel, the hardness somehow right.
You see how that must be, each edge a blade
Each rib a sawtooth cut from its own cage?
The white linen behind looks like a page.
I’ve made a larger canvas now from sheets
To hide them and to stretch them took an age.
 I think I may die soon, my time’s all used,
I trust the sheet I’ve made will hold up all.