A MODEST MOUND OF BONES

That short-sleeved man, our
          uncle owns
the farm next our farm, south
          and west of us, and
he butchers for a living, hand-to-mouth.
         Once walking on his land
we found a hill, topped by a flower,
         a hill of bones.

They were rain-scrubbed clean,
         lovely things.
Depending how the white
         sun struck, chips of col-
or — green, yellow, dove-blue, a light
         bay — flew off the sul-
len stilled turning there. To have seen
         those clickless rings,

those prisonerless
         ribs, complex
beyond the lathe’s loose jaws,
         convolute compounds
of knobs, rods, hooks, moons, absurd paws,
         subtle flats and rounds:
no man could conceive such finesse,
         concave or -vex.

Some warp like the belly
         of a wheeze.
As a cat thinks, some bend,
         or curve as if hunting
infinity, toward which to tend.
         How it sags! what bunting
is flesh to be hung from such ele-
         gant balconies?
                                    – John Updike