The Burden of Fossils III
Gay Brewer
The dead had mortgaged the house centuries
before, but she only knew living with them.
They accepted her as caretaker of their great
congregation. There was never a true silence
in the house, even the quietest corner was noisy
with dust, and the clock kept reminding you.
Someone asked, Beatrice, how old is the house?,
and she would shrug and smile, sometimes
let the walls speak, sometimes cite rumors
of five hundred years, which no one believed
but, looking up, how could you say otherwise?
The questioner, a duchess, a retired general,
or even a shaggy artist, would nod respectfully.
Because you had to whisper in that house,
a quiet whisper of acceptance, or keep it buried.
The curved walls held hundreds of her dead
husband's paintings, a puzzle that didn't quite
make a picture. The name he had taken, merely
the early act of a bandolero creating himself,
of a desert gaucho parading on his white mare.
That's the story the walls had been instructed
to tell, but you'd have to turn the frames for
the rest, or catch them unguarded, murmuring
among themselves. The hallway remnants didn't
help-a four foot skull, like bleached flour,
found exactly so on the sand. That mythic beast
the horned whale. You could almost believe it.
This, she offers, is the sword of the swordfish.
Her accent is deeply worn, and the sword heavy,
cool like a petrified wood with sharp edges.
You extend the blade on open palms, as if it
were another ghost. Her future is among bones,
and her body, as light as smoke, is anchored
by shadows and made of them. She is
the only one who remembers their names.
