Wishbone

by Graham Turner

“Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns,
destroys even more: the belief that any
pattern exists. But we cannot, I think,
survive without such belief.” JULIAN BARNES

Do like the Etruscans: stroke
don’t break she says
to preserve and share
not pit the hopes
of each against another
honouring the mystery of
this elastic clamping
of the clavicles
that alone permits  
the awe of flight –
flesh and blood
feather and branch
sinew and soil
wormgift and windlift –
as we hear you at
the kitchen sink share
Gaelic psalms
that calmed the Minch
and believing in bones
believing in up
we hold again         
again
in the wishful clinch.