Enheduanna's Daughter

Encountering Old Bones: 2(For episode 1, go back here.)
‘Human bone?’ I said, ‘How can you tell?’ Sure, the man was a doctor, but he was talking about bone that had been shaped and carved.
‘I’m not that smart,’ he said. ‘We found a note in his vest pocket. If anything happened to him, he wanted the rosary returned to the family of the woman the bone came from: the family of Lily Vallee. He was looking for them, apparently. But it’s no name from round here.’
‘That sounds like a made-up name,’ said Ben, the newspaper man. ‘A stage name, maybe?’
‘GRUESOME FIND ON DEAD MAN’ read the headline. As sheriff, I made some posters with the details. Our little local paper wouldn’t reach very far. We used an artist’s drawing of the dead man’s face; he never told his own name, but maybe someone would recognise him.
I locked the rosary away but I used to look at it sometimes, and even handle it, wondering about the woman whose body was pilfered for such a ghoulish souvenir, and the man who carried it. Wa…

 Encountering Old Bones
At first I thought he was dead, lying there in the desert, his legs and extended arms protruding from behind one of the sparse cactus plants. Then I realised he was consciously holding up his rosary.
‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘looks like I’m the answer to a freaking prayer! How about that?’
I got one of the team to give him some water, slowly at first, then lay him across the saddle of the pack-horse and make him secure (moving some of the baggage to our mounts). He was damn near collapsing, and couldn’t seem to talk but only gasp and grunt, yet he still clutched that rosary with fierce persistence.
We couldn’t tell what he was doing out there, apparently travelling on foot. Sure he needed help pronto, but did he also need jail when we got back to town? Was he running from the law, or escaping some desperado? He’d have to have a guard on him, either way.
We knew the way to the springs, which our guest obviously didn’t. We camped there overnight. We did our best to m…

What Price?
Sitting on the ground at the edge of the car park, just outside the doors into the shopping centre, he blows the deep notes of his digeridoo. Its sound is resonant — as they all are, connecting to the earth — yet more mellow than some I’ve heard. It’s not an easy instrument to master.
I remember busking. I don’t think it’s big earnings in a small country town like this. I don’t see how it could be.
And I know, too, the need to get your art out there, to share and communicate. This expert player has something to give. 
It might be his only job, I think. (Where are the orchestra spots for didgeridoo players?) Even as an Age Pensioner, I can spare $5. When I come back down from the shops, he is just laying down his didge for a break, stretching out his legs in front of him and leaning back against the wall. I stop and fish in my wallet, then drop $5 in coins on his mat. 
 He looks up, and I see that he’s young, maybe twenty. He gives me the most beautiful, light-filled smile. 
‘Tha…

Walking Away from 2020 Can we walk away
from this apocalypse?
And if we might,
where to?

In the time of COVID,
walking away
consists of
staying at home.

Our poor minds
in our lonely heads
now walk away
into strange places.

We are walking away
from the selves
we used to be —
collectively.

We do not know
our destination:
the road, or all roads,
uncharted.

In the great cities
streets are empty
without movement
as if useless.


Although this was written to my own prompt for Weekly Scribblings #40 at Poets and Storytellers United, I had trouble getting into it until I gave myself a structure. When the first couple of verses were all I had, it was fairly easy to turn them into 17-syllable American sentences, but arranged in four lines each, and keep that form for the rest of the poem. (Yes I know the first verse is technically two sentences. Hey, even Allen Ginsberg, who invented the American Sentence, did that occasionally.)

October arrives, and my thoughts turn to …(Separate micro-poems about different people)

private cremation –still seeing your thin bodyin that old T-shirt
**********
October and it’s overor always used to be –re-living all those deathsin early Spring. But nowthis is the month Letitia died.
**********
A year since you died.For good practical reasons,I change the names ofthe haiku and tanka groupswe held together – and weep.

Sharing with Weekly Scribblings #39 at Poets and Storytellers United.

The Universe Is Always Listening
'What is it?' she said,'That invisible thingmarked with patience?I should have it, not you.I’m the pretty one.All the daddies and uncles and cousinslike me because I smileand I’m pretty. Prettyand sweet. Youjust stay in the corner. It’s not fair. It’s allsupposed to come to me.'
I didn’t answer.How could I?I didn’t know.Not for a long time.And anyway I wantedthe approval bestowed and the pretty facethat earned it.(I was very young.We both were.)The pretty manners too. But I didn’t know howto simper.
‘Patience wouldn’t please you anyway,’I didn’t know to say.Well it was long ago.She’s dead now.She did find waysto get muchthat she wanted.After the facegrew ordinaryshe still hadwiles and charm.And calculation.
My invisible support, I understand now,can be discernedin its effects ...if you’re looking.There is nothingI have to do. That’s what bugged her,my jealous cousin.I do sometimes ask,but I don’t have to.(I sometimesforget that.)
After my la…