grave-gifts by Rebecca Buchanan
knucklebone
swollen and pitted with arthritis
a blue marble
smooth but for the jagged crack
cleaving one side
a lullaby
a mother never got to sing
to her newborn son
dog tags
dented and scratched
a baby’s tooth
uncut
she walks through the cemetery
collecting them one at a time
the knucklebone
rolls to her of its own accord
eager
the marble
is a hard lump beneath her foot
sullen and frightened
she kneels in the wet grass
listening to the lullaby
as she turns the knucklebone and marble
between her fingers
the dog tags
lay just beneath the surface
of fresh-turned soil
she has to dig for the tooth
in an unmarked plot
along the outer fence
while the infant wails incoherently
through his trash bag and rags
the knucklebone
goes to the granddaughter
who treasured the quilts
her grandmother continued to make
even as her fingers bent and twisted
the blue marble
goes to the man
walking through the prison gates
a reminder to hang from his keychain
the lullaby
she writes down in a neat hand
on fine paper
and slips beneath the front door
of the heartsick widower
the dog tags
she delivers in person
to the legless marine
and then holds him while he weeps
the tooth
she keeps for herself
she fills her pockets with them
strings them around her neck and wrists
tokens of the lost and abandoned
as she walks cemeteries uncounted
gathering the gifts of the dead
A skeletal couple gaze at their baby’s first tooth.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
Colour lithograph by L. Crusius, 1897.
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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