The Right Fit

Finding the right fit is similar whether it's
stones, jigsaws or bones. Sometimes in a picture of the sea
an exacting fleck of spray must be matched to the speck
or pieces will not align. When building a man from the bones of birds the
right fit can take years, and it did. He collected their trapped flapping bodies
by the moon, chloroform smothers to delicate frames which he stripped
down behind curtains by scalpel. The meat was poked through cracks in the floor,
feathers bagged then billowed upstairs, once clean he sorted
tiny bones by size like Lego. The man started with the face,
tweezer-built eye sockets, spiking cheeks,
angled jaw, each alignment tested, swapped and refined till plush as if
matured from birth. By the end his bones too
were brittle displaced spindles, shaking as they found
their spot, and when the cleaning squad moved in, following swarming rats
and relentless cawing, they found two skeletons fused
into one, locked in a wingless embrace.

John Porter

If you have any comments on this poem,  John Porter  would be pleased to hear from you.