Consider Bones
A small gecko,
liquid, graceful, quick,
poses on herringboned brick,
examines me
even as I examine him,
his tiny, paper-thin bones,
delicate as workings of a lady’s watch.
As fossil he would be
an object d’art,
elevated on a brass display stand.
Pecan trees,
winter bones en déshabillé,
begin to green as I lower myself
into a sling chair.
Clunky old bones, porous,
mineral-leached,
relax their architecture,
an awkward scaffolding
beneath thin voile skin.
Sun spills, milk-colored,
in ever-widening flow,
warms our bones. Odd
how the term fluid
covers both gecko and sun.
We are all sap or blood,
put down roots of one sort or another,
our thin flesh worn loosely,
in this place of milky light.
Ann Howells of Dallas, Texas has edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years, recently digitally at www.IllyasHoney.com. Recent books: Under a Lone Star (Village Books Press, 2016) and an anthology of D/FW poets she edited: Cattlemen & Cadillacs (Dallas Poets Community Press, 2016). Her chapbook, Softly Beating Wings (Blackbead Books, 2017), was published as winner of the William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest. Her work appears in a variety of small press and university publications.
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