The Bone Cupboard

Old bones

Ever-covered in newly spun webs

sit within the rusting, grey shelves

of an old postal station

in a corner of the courtyard.

Below each cupboard

traces of organized, synchronized routes

still show

where news of kin and other stuff

was carried to folks now dust to dust.

Sun-bleached bones

of brilliant white,

smooth to the touch,

feathery light,

mark passages of the All But Forgotten

among those to fall

and follow.

Aged antlers of young stag,

shed in endless play

on the windy hillside of pine and scrub,

now rest within.

Pronged and proud

and pleasant to hold.

As is the pronghorn’s horn,

still warm,

when I picked it from a field

of slow-greening grasslands

where the dogs and I roam.

Unlike the skin on the skull

of an old coyote

found curled and alone,

having died on its own,

beside a wash not far from home.

Quietly undetected

and un-ravaged,

by its rather savage setting

… until I came along.

Too big for its shelves,

the spine of an elk

sits on top

with a trove of skulls and bones

needing time to succumb

to the days and the sun.

To the wind and the grit

and the unrelenting clock,

turning sinew and muscles and hide

to naught.

So all that’s left

are skulls and teeth,

ribs and hooves,

a monstrous skeleton

and nature’s great good.

Of lives being lived.

And friends being lost.

Of all of us food

and bones to be tossed

inside the rusty, fading shelves

of the cupboard in a corner of the courtyard.