Bones and Beyond

I wrote Dave King I would look for a poem, I was sure I had written, in order to "converse" with his marvellous "Twigbones" in his latest post. ( Oh hurry up Dave's latest post lasts only one day, tomorrow the latest will surely be another, I have rarely seen a blogger more regularly active than him... ) I haven't found the poem I, vaguely unfortunately, had in mind but one which can be considered his "brother", actually "sister" in my geographical area, in Italian "poem-poesia" is female...

Anyway here is the poem.


BONES AND BEYOND
to Tina

Sunlight is strong now,
it goes straight into the bones,
the planks carved and gnawed by salt
in dazzling furrows of white
and nails whose rust has overlapped
-on the wood faded orange stains.
In front the wrinkled blue of the waves,
their heart-cutting lines.
Here the vast pulse
of all that’s undone streaming by,
the sea swelling in the windy heat,
the glare blinding along the stones,
and your windswept skin, quietly torn,
extinguished to the bone
and the bones themselves crumbling into dust
under the breath of the light’s still swarm.

At noon you are
the crossing shadow of a gull
or a swirl on the water-skin
skimmed by a quick gaze
or a vein of salt winding among the barnacles
gathered up by whales.