That short-sleeved man, our uncle owns

the farm next our farm, south and west of us, and

he butchers for a living, hand-to-mouth. Once walking on his land

we found a hill, topped by a flower, a hill of bones.

They were rain-scrubbed clean, lovely things.

Depending how the white sun struck, chips of col-

or—green, yellow, dove-blue, a lightbay—flew off the sul-

len stilled turning there. To have seen those clickless rings,

those prisonerless ribs, complex

beyond the lathe’s loose jaws, convolute compounds

of knobs, rods, hooks, moons, absurd paws,subtle flats and rounds:

no man could conceive such finesse, concave or -vex.

Some warp like the belly of a wheeze.

As a cat thinks, some bend, or curve as if hunting

infinity, toward which to tend. How it sags! what bunting

is flesh to be hung from such elegant balconies?