Bone Garden
 

If you’ve made it this far you’re winning
and can take off your shoes, walk barefoot
on holy ground – grass as sticky-back plastic –
toast yarrow’s marshmallow puffery. It’s not
a competition. Memento mori even
amongst these illustrious dead. Gaze on
this sandstone skull splitting
slowly in each heat and freeze, heat and freeze,
still living on, a seasonal breathing
in its clippered bed. They say
that the resurrection men hunted
here, sniffing out the freshly interred
to sell on like fat Chaise Longues,
spilling their stuffing. But there’s more,
a hungry treasure buried under these mossy crossbones.
Kneel, dig your fingernails into the earth, right to the mooning
cuticles, then raise them to your nose: your brain sparks
bacterial and your tongue sparks bacterial,
an umami muddy chemistry that is our home.
Breathe deeply into this bone garden, here
where the glorious perfume of the living
and the dead blooms from our earthy bodies;
and know that you are loved by all
the creatures on the sweet breeze.