Waking in the morning anxious about troubled dreams he couldn’t trace was not a happy experience for today’s poet, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc of Portland. Yet he “took paper in trade” for it, and the description he wrote became today’s fine poem.  

Worry Bone 

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc 

Woke gnawing its remains. Air

the brackish tinge of depths I had

 

all night been swimming in. No bird

song from the vine-covered fence

 

my room looks out on – not even

the pigeons’ manic calls. I talked

 

myself down from the bed, a loft,

took paper in trade for the splintered

 

bone – human or animal

I don’t know. I’d picked it clean though,

 

chewed the joint, cracked one end,

sucked the marrow. Tell me,

 

Mind, why you ravaged this limb-part.

Tell me what its owner told you in the dark.

 

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