Bone Morning
Doug Ramspeck
Powdered residue. Mealy snow in the woods. This door opening
into first grays. Exiled hour anointed in thinning fog. This, our dispensation. This, the world inside our world. The strangled
back of the throat of bird cries sputtering their fuses. To dream
of rubbing the ointment of weak light across our skin. To dream of hours
so thin they disintegrate in hands. And the old gnaw of my brother leading us
into the field and pointing toward the throbbing toothache of the sun.
Low slung. Low fever. Mute as it lifts its tired body amid branches.
Then my brother pointing past the train bridge. Pointing to where the doe has cast herself
into parts. Blood on snow. Blood on train tracks. And my brother says, Look
And the sun says, The world is conjured from bones. The smell of death
like the smell of old snow. Like rotting loam. Like leaking light.