Intimation

In the silence of the museum
the skeleton’s curious jigsaw
waits under glass,

As a boy I saw only
the fairground horror show,
didn’t stop to puzzle at how
this odd framework could ever
have tottered through being;

Now I think of nothing else,
the patient fragility waiting
around the corner of our lives,

A shadow this simple man
daily used his prayers like
a fork to push off
March 2012.