Archaeology
       

I went to the basement where my father kept his skulls.
I stood before the metal utility shelves. Skulls to the ceiling.
I looked into the eyeholes, into a cranium's tomahawk hole.
Down there, it was nothing but his lab. I held
those skulls like empty pots. What did I know about Indian pots?
Some days, we went to the bars. I swung my legs from the barstool
and drank my Coke. Some days, he dug the fields.
Then it was skulls in the sink, skulls in the drying rack.
The fields are full of skulls. You have to know where the plows
turn them up. What did I know, then, about digging?
The dark inside the eyeholes. He wrote his notes on them
in indelible ink. 2.7 pounds. 2.5. The fields are full of pots.
It's true. He told me, packing his shovel into the Volkswagen.
What did I know about Indians? He kept a lab in our basement
because the university was too cheap. I went to the basement
where he kept his skulls. I looked into their eyeholes. I loved
their weight, but what did I know? When I lay in bed,
they glowed down there. It was many years ago. I closed my eyes
and the skulls talked in the basement. Indian pots. Teeth.
The noise of sex from his room. At the bars, farmers told him
what their plows turned up. I drank my Cokes. Cheap university
without a decent lab. The skulls spoke a language no one knew.
Look at this, my father said, rinsing another one in the sink.
This one took a bullet to the head. History, then, was silence.
The refrigerator hummed. The skull glowed. He'd scrubbed the soil away.

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Copyright © 2019 Kevin Prufer All rights reserved
from Cherry Tree
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission