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Saturday Poem / Natural History
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There are tools, sharp
tips protected under plastic,
whose slim metal bodies we can touch
turn in our fingers,
musing what it might
feel like to be the man
on the other side of the glass
who holds the instrument
deftly dipping it in
and out of fossils
while we watch --
while he tries not to notice
our stares, instead
squinting a bit at the bone
shrouded in stone and soil.
The flesh of his fingertips
is pulled tight these days,
gathering and wrinkling instead
around the knobs of knuckles.
Age spots. Thin skin. He knows
to where the trace of blue veins leads.
He gives no air of insecurity
as he brushes rock powder
from dinosaur bone
in the fossil preparation center,
he does not flinch at the implication
that in this room, he is the exhibit,
mortality
the museum.
Children run along the edge
of the window display,
their attention held
only a moment by his task;
the little ones turn and roll back, voyeurism
has not yet grown layers
of subtlety in their thriving
skins, their skeletons still slightly
soft.
First Published September 29, 2012 12:00 am
