Supple Bones
Dec 18 2021
The wishbone must be dry and brittle,
flex a little, then snap.
Because a fresh bone bends;
there is no clean break, no winner.
Is there an art to this?
Perhaps more wrist,
a subtle twist
a tighter grip?
A cynic, of course, doubts the worth of wishing
and simply declines to play.
While the devout pray,
because anything less
would be apostasy.
And for those like me
who seem to get the short end, time and again
the game feels fixed,
my desire thwarted
for another year.
Yet I feel deep in my bone,
try my best
to believe in wishes.
And patiently wait,
for the dry winter air
to desiccate its tissue,
a wish to come true.
Does it ever break clean
right down the middle?
And what would this mean?
The end of superstition
or an equal division of luck;
either everyone getting their wish,
or contingent life
left up to us?
Because wishing
doesn't make it so.
The turkey died.
And we are made
of supple bones.
This piece was inspired by today's Writers' Almanac. Nothing to do with the content of that poem — which is a darn good one — but rather just a single word that for some reason struck me. Maybe it was its whimsical quality. Not to mention its timeliness, in this holiday season of the festive bird. / B
“Neck Broken, Resourceful Cyclist Walks to Emergency Room”
— from a news bulletin
by Carolyne Wright
Too late the bus slammed on its brakes — the rider
thrown over her mangled handlebars, against
the bus grille’s bent metallic grimace. Her neck’s
seventh vertebra ruptured, the woman gripped her
head between her palms, and stood, and walked
to the ER, a block away — noon darkness aglow
with the accident’s split-second flash: to let go
would kick the stool out from under the noose-necked
prisoner. “But I wanted to live,” she told
reporters later. “I didn’t dare to break
that wishbone with myself.” How else to command
each cell hold its balance — inner fire cold
as knowing Her own life: could she ever again take
it so — completely — in her hands?
Carolyne Wright "Neck Broken, Resourceful Cyclist Walks to Emergency Room" from This Dream the World: New and Selected Poems. © 2017 Carolyne Wright published by Lost Horse Press.
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