Jennifer MacPherson

The Bone Poem

Bones
waken me to midnight's open silence
with their ghostly ache,
suggest that it's time to bargain again
with god.

not the God of meek and gentle heart
who rises – perfect – each Spring
but an older, arthritic god
who knows about bones,
notes the hour
when they begin to slowly grind each other,
when skin thins and they stand like
so many knobby sentinels.

This god counts poems
we have yet to write
like a rosary of bones clicking
through his gnarled fingers,
naming each one as it begins to split:
tibia, fibula, radius, ulna.

Older than benevolence,
this is the god
who shatters stone in rage,
who makes seas swallow regiments,
whose own bones mutter when he leans to listen.