A STORY ABOUT BONES

Christina Olson

as it turns out, paleontology & poetry

         
            are not all that different

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both the excavating of a shard

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            here & there, an attempt to see what fits

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the painstaking assembly of meaning from fragments                    

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            maybe if you get lucky: a tooth, pointed—

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the people in their practical clothes & boots

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            sometimes even the same tiny brushes

& at the museum I kept calling the collections stacks

            but instead of poem let’s just say word cage

all morning I’ve been laboring at this—

            the way I regard something for hours, come back

& in the new light over the desk, something’s shifted

            suddenly I see the tusk, the femur

or the weapon, how it fits in my hand

            like it’s always been there           like I never put it down