Unguligrade Remnant

Posted on October 16, 2003 in Poems

A lone bone,

a two-toed hoof

a tibula of the palest sage

broken off

below the knee.

Risking infection,

I pick it up,

touch the spiny, stiffened hair collar

circling the paired lop-sided almonds

that face each other

like the lovers at a wedding.

I think of making my own troth

to this stopped relic of fleet-footedness,

this earth treasure more moveable

than the fixed rams charging across tufa cliffs.

Thinking this:

“The dead

their parts

their memory

undo their separation from us

as they did before us”

I return the foot and leg to the off-white soil

This trophy shall stay here, sky-buried.