Lisa Cihlar

BONE

Walking a Lake Michigan beach,
many years ago, I found
a perfectly bleached, intact, loon skull.

I have since drawn it, many angles,
finally wrapped it in a wad
of paper toweling to store away
in a dark drawer full of other treasures.

Now, what thing is this? I
wonder as I spring clean.

Six shoe horns and two broken watches,
three o'clock and one o'clock.
And the skull.

It is beautiful.
As an object,
as an echo of the ululation
on mist risen northern lakes.

But I am quietly disturbed this night
by the keeping of such a thing.
I have no delusions of dust to dust
or other death liturgy.
Turning pillows to cool in the full moon,
light spilled, half dark,
I don't feel haunted, just sad.
Mourning the idea of what was.
The possibilities and actualities.
How many eggs and nests
and matings and flights north and south?
How many calls
waking campers at Big Rapids Park?

And just maybe, left alone, the moon pull
that makes tides in all bodies of water
would have pulled the bone and beak
back into itself. And I could sleep.

Lisa J. Cihlar lives and writes in rural Brodhead, Wisconsin, with her husband and too many cats to count. She has had poems published in Word Riot, Wicked Alice, Salome, Qarrtsiluni, Best Poem, and other journals. She was selected a runner-up in the 2007 Wisconsin People and Ideas poetry contest. Her favorite way to spend a day is to write a poem in the morning and pull weeds from among tomato plants all afternoon.