Can these bones live? - Ezekiel 37:3 Sometimes I think my bones are made of words. Some ancient and forgotten, almost fossilized, others in their marrow dreaming new language not yet framed in book or speech—a "goblish“ soft and pliable, like a fanning tailbone of peacock feather for my walking skeleton of hickory sticks. My clavicle, for one, close to the heart feels heavy, “ful gēomorre,” long banished with the Old English and “full sad.” I consider the carpals daily as I wash my hands, “bote for bale,” quick to open the palm, quick to soothe, a “remedy for evil.” Call the occipital “fiammante," a coinage of late Latin, a bone “on fire,” so to speak, igniting the spine with blue, yellow, indigo flame. A resurrection should be easy enough to claim then, right? Even with one’s nomenclature still evolving. Simply revive the old words, embrace the new, with nothing lost, not a jot, not a tittle, but the whole everlasting bone work burnished in the strange and motley, a goblish forged to plumb the cosmos and live forever, and the first fragment to rise, vertu.
 | A guest post by
|