"The Bones She Keeps" - Poem of the Day

I found lines to a poem from my first book on Pinterest. 

Someone had matched it up with this incredible photo.
I was pretty amazed to find it and that someone took the time to create visual with the words. That's the miracle of the internet -- you find out people have read your book, your very first book.

Here's the full poem here.  It was dedicated to my friend Nancy Canyon who would collect bones she found on the beach.

The Bones She Keeps

When we look at the teeth

we guess coyote, not dog. 

And this?

The shoulder blade of a seal,

or perhaps, a river otter. 

There is a bone on every windowsill.

What about this?  A cat?  A skunk?

I see part of a jawbone in the white

curve she holds in her palm,

the spine of a raccoon.

And when we line them up,

this white alphabet of what is left,

a new species is born across the table.

I mention the cow skull I found

on a Mexican highway,

how I brought it back

to my apartment, dropped it

in a bucket of bleach,

only to watch black legs emerge,

the widow exiting an eye socket. 

Even now, I can't think of bone

without remembering the spider,

how the living always make room

in the spaces the dead leave behind.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

  from Small Knots (Cherry Grove, 2004)

~ Kells 
www.agodon.com
www.twosylviaspress.com

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