Study In Archaeology
--to Blythe, my daughter
"It seems that no one
has ever really studied
these fine hand bones,"
you explain softly,
stretching your slim, pale hand
-- those slender fingers --
palm up, for me to see,
holding within it the light
fragile bones of a child --
finger bones small as matchsticks
burnished with age.
You study them now, eyes filled
with devotion close to love;
and bending closer--my hand
stubby fingered, fleshed
with live age, suspended
for a moment above these in fear
of breaking something,
I touch them at last
lightly as a breath
they
move like feathers
and my breath is stopped, sucked
sharply in, in remembrance, I swear
of this death, of
an eternity of small deaths
feared-- your bones
once as tiny as these, with flesh
too soft to be called
"like" anything on this earth,
held, but a fragment of a second
in the time-span you study,
in my hand.
Oh, someone
has studied these bones
you hold like blessed offerings
before me, my young teacher,
child, my own--
someone
has studied, studies now, will study
these fine hand bones.
(reprinted with thanks from both Anthropology and Humanism,
The American Anthropological Assoc., and Lake Street Review)
