Hello Poetry
Submit your work and get some sparkles! Create free account
Words
"netufian" poems
Maybe men labored under a yellow sky bent under barley sheaves they’d cut, returned behind limestone walls and leaned to splash water on each other at the well. You can see its crumbling curve today, in one city as old when Cheops' pyramid was built as pyramids are to us right now.   Jericho, not so far away from Egypt and, our archaeologists tell us, likely really didn’t hear the blare of Joshua’s trumpets shuddering down old Canaan-cursed by-Noah, coaxing walls to shudder, teeter, list from Israelite raids. You see one barley-bearer shaking dry, descend  stair-tunnels to his flat to kneel before his hungry daughter, hungry wife, waiting for evening’s barley bread to cool. He joins as they resume their business of the day to gently set the cowrie eyes in Grandma’s face, two priests removed the rest of her last year, but left the precious head to decompose at home scented in the wall with sweet Netufian herbs, And now the family gathers near small fire, desert nightbreeze filtering through the cracks tenderly to soften Mother’s bony head with daubs of plaster re-create her nose, and gaping eye sockets, softening too those black orbits with white plaster. Slowly her death’s head touched tenderly by younger finger tips becomes something like a human head again, If not quite living, cowrie shells complete this vision of a vacant queenly stare befits a family shrine. When things are done, small granddaughter now squeals with delight her own dark eyes reflect the fire-light.
0
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 6:51 AM UTC
frederick-shiels
SWEET SKULLS OF JERICHO
Maybe men labored under a yellow sky bent under barley sheaves they’d cut, returned behind limestone walls and leaned to splash water on each other at the well. You can see its crumbling curve today, in one city as old when Cheops' pyramid was built as pyramids are to us right now.   Jericho, not so far away from Egypt and, our archaeologists tell us, likely really didn’t hear the blare of Joshua’s trumpets shuddering down old Canaan-cursed by-Noah, coaxing walls to shudder, teeter, list from Israelite raids. You see one barley-bearer shaking dry, descend  stair-tunnels to his flat to kneel before his hungry daughter, hungry wife, waiting for evening’s barley bread to cool. He joins as they resume their business of the day to gently set the cowrie eyes in Grandma’s face, two priests removed the rest of her last year, but left the precious head to decompose at home scented in the wall with sweet Netufian herbs, And now the family gathers near small fire, desert nightbreeze filtering through the cracks tenderly to soften Mother’s bony head with daubs of plaster re-create her nose, and gaping eye sockets, softening too those black orbits with white plaster. Slowly her death’s head touched tenderly by younger finger tips becomes something like a human head again, If not quite living, cowrie shells complete this vision of a vacant queenly stare befits a family shrine. When things are done, small granddaughter now squeals with delight her own dark eyes reflect the fire-light.
Continue reading...
35