Artwalk POETRY and ART

Naming

The colour of the hands
earlier
lifting the dirt away.

Light finds its own way,
burrows
deep into black eyehole,

bone, surrenders it slowly
up
out of the earth.

One hand a fingered crown.
The other,
thumb to index finger

a hammock beneath the chin. Thin.
Merciful.
Trying not to tremble.

The circumference of the skull
unearthed
beneath a sunless sky

defines the curvature of fingers;
held
in the light it names

a kind of beauty. Bone
catacomb,
the future and the past,

*Visit artist's web site:   www.wesleybates.com

Visit the Carnegie Gallery web site: www.carnegiegallery.org