Ashes Are Butterfly Bones Made of Light and Dust:
God's Bones in their Wings
(for Peter Norman)
His bones are light,
(radiant, bone-barred):
Even the smallest bone in his inner ear, the bone chapel—
bone etchings,
bone song,
bone dance,
bone dream,
bone silence.
Old momma teach me nerve ends
made of juniper and bone,
bear bones and feathers,
bread and not bone;
the bone broker.
Here is a bone resembling a word;
milk tooth bane bone
seed-bone and hammer.
When the bone fragments arc to earth
the bone's song will be pulled,
descending to my ankle-bones.
The wind picks up the dust from the ashes,
the white of bone;
your bone, Morgan's bones, lean and boneless,
the jazz-loosened loose bone thing he is.
We will have only bones to hold;
the bone ash of
a red herring-bone skirt clasped with a bone button
buried among femurs and knuckle bones
where the bones of the child are hid.
The stone’s praise
for the sparrow’s ankle bone
rising like a frozen flood
of stone bone birds on the wing singing.
I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
by Ron Reed
with Margaret Avison, Leonard Cohen, Joy Kagawa, Lorna Crozier, Lorne Daniel, Daniela Elza, Moira MacDougall, Michael McAloran, Cassidy McFadzean, Kath MacLean, Jill Battson, Joe Blades, Louise Halfe, Ben Ladouceur, Dennis Lee, Christine Murray, Carol Shillibeer, Anne Simpson, Elizabeth Zetlin, and Robert W. Service.
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What the critics are saying;
"Most of all it’s felt experience, what’s close to the bone – feelings, emotions, combined with a sense of craft."
Cyril Dabydeen
"The poem does not hang straggled and bone-whitened like rags in the bleaching sun. His engagement is with a burned and ruined corpse left out to dry and fossilize with its rag-remnant of torn flesh and chilled bone, an empty jaw-bone, a leaving from a physical life. Here is a victory-song for life pushing up through human-remains, detritus, stink and bone." Bone Orchard Poetry
"Cuts to the bone and then into the bone, to find the marrow." Turtle Island Native Network
