Natural Selection
My father pulls skulls from drawers,
mostly deer. Masks waiting for faces,
foundlings from upstate
that smell of smoke from the pipe drawer below.
One has short chalky antlers, an unfinished story.
He wants to show me the gaping mystery
of memories and desires left behind,
and how to be gentle with them.
He carefully pulls apart
folds of paper to reveal a handful
of long, speckled needles gathered in a pleat,
a porcupine’s release.
At the estuary thirty years later
I collect bones from the tide. Today
there’s a fan shaped piece, concave
like a shoulder blade.
Sinewy radiations pour into the hollow
from a tiny hinge in its corner.
A fish’s opercle bone,
delicate shield for a soft comb of gills,
a trap door for water to
sieve into breath, the connector of self
to everything else. It’s a strange evolutionary loop:
distant aquatic ancestors
inhale water and the lungs
of an old man on dry land
fill with fluid, return him to sea.
mostly deer. Masks waiting for faces,
foundlings from upstate
that smell of smoke from the pipe drawer below.
One has short chalky antlers, an unfinished story.
He wants to show me the gaping mystery
of memories and desires left behind,
and how to be gentle with them.
He carefully pulls apart
folds of paper to reveal a handful
of long, speckled needles gathered in a pleat,
a porcupine’s release.
At the estuary thirty years later
I collect bones from the tide. Today
there’s a fan shaped piece, concave
like a shoulder blade.
Sinewy radiations pour into the hollow
from a tiny hinge in its corner.
A fish’s opercle bone,
delicate shield for a soft comb of gills,
a trap door for water to
sieve into breath, the connector of self
to everything else. It’s a strange evolutionary loop:
distant aquatic ancestors
inhale water and the lungs
of an old man on dry land
fill with fluid, return him to sea.
In Wooded Places
Next to the old cemetery there are tree
trunks in the process of growing
around stones,
stones moved to the woodland, un
earthed to make space for the dead.
I used to worry
that trees felt pain when
a metal hook, the end of a clothesline
became part of their bark,
unable as they are to stop growing.
Now I wonder if they rather like
to subsume things, to accrete new materials,
the opposite of shedding, becoming skin. Maybe
they particularly like to collect stones,
which have even longer
memories than trees.
Maybe they like to slowly
inter the stones, carry them
like a fetus. Maybe the stones
want to be enchambered, darkly held in place
like a heart.
In the old cemetery
at a maple’s flared base
a white shoulder
of marble retreats into a secret
that takes years to form.
trunks in the process of growing
around stones,
stones moved to the woodland, un
earthed to make space for the dead.
I used to worry
that trees felt pain when
a metal hook, the end of a clothesline
became part of their bark,
unable as they are to stop growing.
Now I wonder if they rather like
to subsume things, to accrete new materials,
the opposite of shedding, becoming skin. Maybe
they particularly like to collect stones,
which have even longer
memories than trees.
Maybe they like to slowly
inter the stones, carry them
like a fetus. Maybe the stones
want to be enchambered, darkly held in place
like a heart.
In the old cemetery
at a maple’s flared base
a white shoulder
of marble retreats into a secret
that takes years to form.
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Klara Seddon is a New York-based writer. Her work has appeared in Women & Performance and other publications. She has taught literary history and craft at The Morgan Library & Museum and currently works on a literacy development project at the Center for Advanced Study in Education at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
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