You sit on the beach and pick at fish bone
after maggots and flies have had their way,
poke it with a stick, listen to the tide,
wonder what it sounds like underwater.
Whale songs, shark bites, seal birth, and coral
in a circus of clown fish, puffers, and lions.
I dig a hole to bury the carcass,
the bone, no flesh, you name him Sergio.
As the dolphin tide rolls in sand erodes
exposes the burial bone by bone
until it washes to sea like drift wood.

When we were young we captured frogs out back
in the creek in the woods behind your house,
and once I tripped into a small ravine.
We found door sized slabs of concrete or rock
engraved with names and nineteenth century dates.
Civil War gravestones, some professor said,
and they were moved somewhere to some museum.
Later on the news they interviewed us,
and in the background bulldozers dug holes
that exposed some two hundred year old bones,
skeletons and skulls, excavated from burial,
as we smiled to the channel two reporter.