one day you will be a curio
something I keep on the mantle
to show my friends
how much I’ve changed

something I keep on the mantle
that gathers dust
and is ignored until I want

to show my friends
how much stronger I am now
that I’ve faced my mistakes and

how much I’ve changed
since I won control
of my heart

Posted 012712

October in the Hill Country is a time
when seasons meet to exchange colors,
when the deep greens fade to pale
and pigments seep through the leaves
of hardwood trees from north to south.

Before it is seen, October is felt
in the settled quiet of forests at night,
the inherent coolness of morning breezes
that penetrate skin and consciousness,
alerting the senses to coming changes.

When geese follow ancestral memories
and furry creatures increase their stores
in response to nature’s subtle murmuring,
it is time to look beyond summer’s harvest
and plan for the coming winter’s sleep.

It is time for men and women to pause
in their daily churning and adjust their focus,
to gather around themselves the bounty
of their labors and give thanks for changing
seasons amid the constancy of life.

Posted 011312

all she heard was the ache in his voice
when he called for her
to wrap her arms around him
and kiss his December lips

when he called for her
she returned slowly to his side
resigned once more

to wrap her arms around him
like evening fog
around a dying tree

and kiss his December lips
a kiss he hoped would
defy time

Posted 010612

The skeleton had promised to show me his bones
- what else did he have, after all, stripped bare
and hanging from a screw through his skull?
First, he asked that I tilt his head away from the sun
or at least pull the shades so light wouldn’t shine
through his orbital fissures into the cranial vault
which once encapsulated gray matter aplenty,
but was now as empty as a nun’s uterus.
He explained that his personality once had been
constrained by the three layers of dura that were lost
to the dissector’s forceps during his transformation,
pointing with a bony finger as he spoke wistfully.

The cranium, he added, was part of his axial apparatus
along with the vertebral column and rib cage,
but he really wanted to show me the appendicular parts
and describe how much they had meant in his life.
This arm, he said, flexing one radius and ulna toward
the humerus and scapula to which they were hinged,
had once held tight the love of his life and had cradled
three children and eight grandchildren, coincidentally
one for each of the many carpal bones in each wrist.
He described the ligaments that had attached such muscles
as the biceps and triceps, and the ball and socket joint
that allowed a full range of motion for work and play.

He swooned when he described the metacarpals and digits,
alternately calling the latter phalanges and fingers,
and had he had eyes, I’m sure they would have glistened
when he addressed the mysteries of opposable thumbs.
These hands, he said, these hands… but could say no more,
lost in memories of playing the piano, writing letters,
and kneading dough for pizza crusts and pasteries.
He asked that I ignore the unnamed sesamoid bones
at the base of the pollex and never mind the calcium deposits
in the interphalangeal joints while he pointed at his elbow,
showing how nicely the ulna’s olecranon process
fit into the corresponding fossa of the humerus.

Then, bowing at the waist, he called attention to his lower parts.
He made special note of the differences between his pelvis
and that of female counterparts strung up in other labs..
citing the flared ischeal bones and the horizontal flare of the iliae
that made child-bearing so much easier for them than him.
His knees were shot, of course, having been hyperextended
and twisted once or twice too often on the football field,
and the tibiae and fibulae were more than slightly misaligned.
He should have stopped there, but he bent over further
to point at and name the tarsal bones and in doing so
a vertebra slipped out of place with a cracking sound
and he moaned: is there an orthopedist in the house?

Posted 123011

]]> http://writingsbystone.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/make-no-bones-about-it/feed/ 0 chucky0629 http://writingsbystone.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/contact-dr-stone/ http://writingsbystone.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/contact-dr-stone/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:06:51 +0000 chucky0629 http://writingsbystone.wordpress.com/?p=224 ]]> Sonja says she hasn’t been able to comment on my poems, so I’ve added this page.  Let’s hear from you.

Posted 062909