Amber
My nine year old wears an amulet of amber with a fossil insect
inside that his mother carried away from its native Baltic home.
The clear orangish gem seems hard like rock but is actually soft
enough to scratch with the jagged edge of a fingernail or knife.
I could easily hack away the resin that instantly trapped this fly
some 25 million years ago after it dipped too close to the sticky ooze,
the same stuff that now provides its polished lapidary view on life.
What would this fly feel like liberated from its amber tear-drop tomb?
Would the wings be soft or snap off from my invasive curiosity?
Wouldn't you love to hold this bug up to your nose and breathe
in hard for a sense of something familiar? How could you resist?
How long did this fly live? A day? Maybe two? No, the question
isn't a question at all but an exclamation: How long this fly has lived!
All over Italy in the dark and dank catacombs of revered churches
are the mummified remains of popes and priests and artists and saints -
men and women from our time, the time of man. They look up
from beneath their death masks at the carved and painted archways,
perhaps askew and askance at the tourists lined up behind the velvet ropes
snapping photos and yawning as if they are no longer any big deal.
The amber insect has seen these tombs, traveling around on my son's neck.
The amber insect sees so many things. He knows the goings on of our
house, the helter-skelter of a fourth grade classroom, the vibrant colors
of cartoons on the TV: the amber insect knows Spongebob Squarepants.
I often wonder what the amber insect thinks. Don't tell me he doesn't think.
He thinks, even if it's only me thinking for him. And I think he thinks
he's pretty lucky to have been liberated from his burial ground in Latvia.
Just this morning, the amber insect caught my eye from the sink top
where my son had carefully placed the necklace before his bath.
The amber insect was watching me brush my teeth. Pretty lucky, indeed.
Even an accomplished old mummified Italian pope couldn’t do that.
6:25:36 PM  Poems
|
