05-09-2023, 11:38 AM
Memento
I was with him when he found it
discarded among cedar and limestone,
the skull of an 8-point buck that he plated
with chips from a shattered mirror.
A record of my son’s painstaking labor -
breaking the mirror, selecting the chips,
affixing them, patient and compelled.
I look into the skull’s mirrors,
meditate on the chaos of my visage
reflected in a kaleidoscope of loss.
In this curiosity of bone and silvered glass,
did he see an indifferent universe
where his future would be denied?
It’s a universe we share. He is father to my grief
and I am father to his memory - this skull
a jagged memento of shadow and light.
——————————
The original can be found here .
I was with him when he found it
discarded among cedar and limestone,
the skull of an 8-point buck that he plated
with chips from a shattered mirror.
A record of my son’s painstaking labor -
breaking the mirror, selecting the chips,
affixing them, patient and compelled.
I look into the skull’s mirrors,
meditate on the chaos of my visage
reflected in a kaleidoscope of loss.
In this curiosity of bone and silvered glass,
did he see an indifferent universe
where his future would be denied?
It’s a universe we share. He is father to my grief
and I am father to his memory - this skull
a jagged memento of shadow and light.
——————————
The original can be found here .
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara