The Bones

Throw down the sack of rattling bones.
Let it tear;
let the mandibles and fibulas,
tarsals, metatarsals, and patellas,
pelvises and sacrums,
carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges
clatter loud across the black stone floor
that paves this quiet night.

My soul is not an ossuary;
no catacomb's niches here,
stuffed with the skulls of forgotten men.
If anything, it should be a basement swept broom-clean,
occupied only by the necessary furnace of my life
and the tools and toys and seasonal items needed
for a house in working order and capable
of something close to joy.

This is my aspiration, which I will not clench
in a miserly fist, but will release to fall,
to break,
and from the wreck of these old bones
a bird of peace will fly.

November 23 2011