The skull is packed in my attic.
Perhaps I should warn my daughter,
assuming she will be the one to sort my life once it’s done.
It doesn’t smell anymore. It took a soaking in bleach and
days of airing in the sun, not so much because of the skull itself
but its tough cartilage — protruding.
No one else I know has one.
It may not even be legal, so, too, I should advise her
not to claim it as part of the estate.
Twice I’ve begun to list my art collection and its provenance.
I become distracted somewhere between paintings and
sculptured Papashvily stones.
Books are beyond me. Suffice it to say she should check
for first editions, autographed volumes of poetry.
Don’t lose Woody Guthrie’s Vol. 1, mimeo union song sheets.
The value of the antler collection may be negligible. But this
dolphin skull and its links of winged vertebrae,
holding on to things like that, my daughter, can save you.
Patricia Goodrich is a writer and visual artist. Her 10 poetry collections include Woman With a Wandering Eye, Verda’s House, Red Mud and Stone Hunting in Transylvania. Her poems have been translated into Chinese, Finnish, French, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Slovenian. She is 2005 Bucks County Poet Laureate. She lives in Springfield Township. For more, visit www.patriciagoodrich.com.
Poet’s Corner is curated by Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus Tom Mallouk and supported by a grant to the Bucks County Herald Foundation made possible by Marv and Dee Ann Woodall.
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