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The Skulls
I watched as others
held the skull
in their hands
like a paperweight
like a human history
of thought
like a stone.
I let my turn pass
as the artifact moved
around the circle
outside the
circular mount
tomb of the eagles.
The human relic
Hamlet's curious
displacement of time
a singular question
of now and then
of how that dead
thing
stripped of flesh
could come back
into this
waiting mind
seems not to have
been a concern.
Rather, I thought of
the man, the life in
terrible struggle
and Orkney barren
as a prisoner island
in his day
and so
did not want
to play with this
ark, brain pan
toy of the tourists
who abandon their
beliefs for
a moment's touch
of the dead.
To say they have
been there.
I let it pass and still
I am not skittish
of death, of dead
tokens of men,
my skull will be ash
before this skull
turns to dust,
and yet I see a head
as something
not sacred
but singular
the things
it was, struggling
to free itself from
these curious hands
to be buried
rather than hefted
in rude silences.
George Moore: Much of George Moore's work of late has been in collaboration with artists in Europe.
He had a showing of poetry and concept art with the French Canadian artist, Mireille Perron,
at Can Serrat, Spain, in 2007, and is doing another with the Scandinavian textile artist,
Hrafnhildur Sigurðardóttir, for an exhibition in Iceland later this year. He is also doing
work with the OBRAS group in Portugal this spring. These poetry combination art efforts
are experimental shape poems, but he continues to work in lyric as well. He has published
poetry in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Orion, Colorado Review,
Nimrod, Meridian, Chelsea, Southern Poetry Review, Southwest Review, Chariton Review,
and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. In 2007, he was a finalist
for the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, from Ashland Poetry Press, and earlier for
The National Poetry Series, The Brittingham Poetry Award, and the Anhinga Poetry Prize.
Recent collections include The Petroglyphs at Wedding Rocks (Edwin Mellen, 1997)
and the e-Books, All Night Card Game in the Back Room of Time (Pulpbits, 2007).
He teaches literature and writing with the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Email: George Moore
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