Bones

View On Black

 

Bones.

 

Marble skull, polished, smoothed

By children's hands, wandering,

Restless through Evensong,

Wondering perhaps, if it is real.

 

Bones stacked in the crypt,

Skulls racked, neat, forgotten

Remnants of war or plague.

Thigh bones piled,

Relics of men long dead.

 

Within the mound

The cranium of a distant Lord

Gives shelter to a rat with young,

Dragging beneath the capping stone,

Glittering tinfoil, incongruous

Amongst the bronze grave goods

Hidden, once, beneath the ground.

 

From the monument upon the wall

The gaping jaw gives out the foliage of resurrection,

A worm of corruption,

An encircling serpent of eternity:

Dry bones, issuing promise of rebirth.

 

Bones,

Waiting bones:

Shadows of our fears,

Symbols of our hopes.

 

(Runner-up Quantum Leap 5x5 Competition, 2004,

and published in QL 5x5 Collection Oct 2004.)

 

Done