Notes on Beauty: The Skull

In Turner’s Sun Settingover a Lake, the colors fuse

and bleed outof the imagined

body of water and sky.I believe this is

dumb substance,evolving or devolving,

the way my fatherused to love

the edge of woodsthat looked out on the fence

and pond. Here a day moonlay broken above

a plumage of black-eyedSusans. Or say

that moon was stoneand the grass was forever,

the way crowseach morning

cry out their auguryfrom summer-thickened

leaves alive withmotion, and the mud

with its rank smellshas its divinations,

and at duskthe bats row

out of the willows,the old meditation

of moonlight scavengingaround us after dark,

sepulchral. Our father saidhe went there to be alone,

to watch the hemoglobintrucks moving past

on the distant highway,to hear not his family

but primitive birdssinging from the old

church cemetery,to watch, in winter,

a calligraphyof snow chalking

the paper bircheslike a faint solder

of moonlight.And once he found

there a woodchuck’s skullhalf buried

in the earth,and he brought it

back to the house,washed it with

a hose, wrapped itin a box,

and presented itto our mother

for their finalanniversary.

I was therewhen she lifted it

into view—the moststrangely surprising

and beautiful giftI’d ever seen.