Fossils

The wind off the lake,
a gentle breeze of early summer,
is transporting fossils through air and time.

Bones stitched those
initials into the corner of that
quilt on the bed, old bones that are gone.

Bones built that broken
boat back there in the trees,
painted that broken boat blue and launched

it in June sunshine.
Other bones, bound then by blood
and memories, cheered the broken boat's

maiden voyage from
the dock. The laughter of bones
rang out across the still surface of the pond

as small, sun-creased
waves peeled away from the bone-
rowed oars and the boat disappeared from view.

Bones talked long into
the night around campfires, and retired
to their beds in the cabins as the darkness swelled

with night's unseen
chorus of frenetic watch-winders
and terse baritones and keening sopranos.

The old bones had dreams,
as all the bones before them and
since. Even the four-legged bones had dreams,

and lost in them
sighed and paddled and occasionally
cried and whimpered and woke to watch the dark.

The bones were cabinets
for hearts, the hearts cabinets for
dreams. The hearts were carried off, the dreams

dispersed, the bones
broken and scattered, scattered
wherever, buried or burned, but not without a trace.

You don't even
have to imagine: You can still
see them. You can still see them everywhere,

the waltzing bones,
still dreaming, the fossils that built
the boats in which we floated, beloved, not yet broken.