Meredith Miller

Let Sleeping Bones Lie 

Here at the museum of sleeping bones, 

in a silent drawer, down a darkened row, 

a stone jawbone older than knowable time: 

Teleoceras, our last rhinoceros. 

Ten million years ago this jawbone  

roamed Nebraska–warm savannah  

and watering holes–till a volcano’s  

drifting ash laid it to rest. 

One jawbone to speak of a species gone. 

Here at the museum the unburied bones 

in silent drawers, down darkened rows, 

lie dreaming of what is lost. 

The Idea of a Moose

Maybe the idea of a moose

is more seemly than the gangle-

legged, nobble-nosed moose

itself: suitable for coffee mugs

and bumper stickers, and proof

we thought about touching wildness

once, and got the tee shirt.

To Make a Bee (After Emily Dickinson)

To make a bee

it takes a prayer

and one queen.

One queen, and a prayer.

And regret.

The regret alone won’t do,

if prayers are few.

Butterfly Effect

Butterflies don’t know

their own effect—

how one flitting wing-

flap shatters the air;

starts a chaos of longing

for impossible things.

worth

a bird in the hand

a hand in the bush

an egg in the bird

a bird in the egg

an egg in the nest

a nest in the bush

a hand in the nest

an egg in the hand

Sea Creatures

We were sea creatures too,

that summer, sunned skin

tumbled smooth by tumbling

waves, and sand scraped.

We ran and screamed

in fear and joy from

blooms of tiny jellyfish,

and felt no sting.                    

Rabbitwise

We saw the rabbit on Easter,

of all days: placidly munching

at the lawn until our attention

pinned it; then it fled down

some tunnel into its underworld

burrow. It wasn’t the bunny

who’d left us jellybeans

that morning; or the chocolate

kind we’d placidly munched

before breakfast was even ready.

But I thought I saw, for a moment,

how we get from here to there—

back and back, to the new

that tunnels up from winter’s

underworld, chasing the light

of the rising spring sun.

After the Plain

Buffalo wears

other skins—

speaks with

other names.

Rivers flow

where his horns

broke the plain—

where the plain

broke him.

Buffalo shifts

as clouds flicker

and split—

shape to shape

across the

setting sky.

Camels to the right of them

On October 4 [1855, the USS] Supply arrived in Constantinople, where the crew 

found camels in short supply because of the Crimean War. [They detoured] to 

Crimea to observe camels in military use by the British…

-Robert Berg, “Camels West”

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

-Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”

Camels to the right of them,

camels to the left of them,

camels behind them–

burdened under 

balaclava, blunderbuss,

earth and armament;

nightingale and cannonball;

shells of metal, shells of men.

Humped backs packed

with all the panoply of

wars away from home:

the wounded and the wounding,

the neverending charge,

the beast and the burden–

never quite the last straw.

Never Forget

What is remembering made of?

Sun and pain,

water and dust;

an eye for an eye,

a tusk for a tusk.

Consider the Leopards of the Veld

Consider the leopards of the veld,

how they go: they despoil not,

neither do they skin

the hide from glorious creatures

to array themselves in.

Is not the life

more than meat?

Shanty

Our ship is well rigged

and she's ready to sail,

The crew they are anxious

to follow the whale

Where the icebergs do fall

and the stormy winds blow,

Where the land and the ocean

is covered with snow—

sea of song

sea of snow

breath of salt

breath of ice

moon swell

aurora roll                               

sea of stars

sea of night

Grizzly Bears’ Picnic

If you go into the woods today

You better lock up your food

Your tent, your car, your garbage cans

You better secure them too

For every bear that ever there was

Will gather in the campground because

Today’s the day the grizzly bears

Have their picnic

Zarafa, 1827

Take her highness, la girafe—

a gift: empire to empire,

only still a calf when she was

taken from her mother’s teat and

trussed, tossed on the back of a camel

and trotted to Khartoum. There

the Nile tide took her to the mouth

of the sea, Alexandria, where

she left one boat for the belly

of another. They cut a hole in the

deck for her neck to stretch;

hung prayers at her throat.

Many miles and months later

it was Marseille: she walked again

on four legs longer than the last

time her hooves had touched land;

she was still a growing calf. An entourage

of cows for her milk, men for her keep,

a naturalist with gout to walk beside her;

and the crowds thronging, surging, growing

even faster than she was, as she walked

six hundred miles north to Paris.

George Sand saw her there: her young son

carried his own stuffed giraffe.

A hundred thousand others turned out

to see le bel animal du roi, planted

at last in the Jardin des Plantes. She lived

eighteen years in that garden—the king’s

beautiful folly, no name of her own, who once

ate rose petals from his hand. In a year

she was forgotten; a passing fad soon past.

What manner of gift was that?