Connection

Poetic free-write skeletons

Today’s poetry prompt for the Writer’s Digest Poem-A-Day challenge was:

write a connection poem.

And, where I found myself today in Lynda Barry’s book Making Comics was on the page where she has us all closing our eyes and drawing skeletons.

In the book, Barry suggests we set a timer for 60 seconds, choose a felt pen, close our eyes, and draw a skeleton. Then, we repeat the identical task using a different colour marker, dawing one skeleton over the top of the previous set of bones.

The result is zany, of course - we are drawing a complicated subject fast and our eyes closed - and yet, the result is certainly skeletal.

As I was drawing, I couldn’t help but think of the song lyrics the ankle bone connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to the… and so on. This is what first connected me to the poetry prompt about connection.

After I’d finished my multi-coloured skeletons, I grabbed a copy of

Visual Encyclopedia (Firefly), one of the books from Dad’s studio. I figured it would include a skeleton somewhere, and I was right. Using the reference photos therein, I started drawing this dude (or dudette), referring to the photos but trying to keep things loose:

As I drew, I found myself thinking about my various bones and the ever-narrowing, more painful spaces between them. At the same time, the poetry prompt kept circling around and I scribbled down words, phrases, and ideas - about the bizarre beauty of the Paris catacombs, the way we like to believe we are solid but are really mostly empty space, how the bones of a skeleton support/provide the foundation for our existence but are devoid of humanity/life without muscle, tendon, nerves, blood vessels…. and how all of those things together (wrapped around all the empty space inside each atom) don’t quite add up to whatever it is that makes up the animating life force unique to each of us… how people connect one to another - across space (with a wave), time (through memory), and physically (by holding hands).

It wasn’t such a leap from there to considering just how delicate the curtain is that separates life from death. I remembered sitting with my grey mare after she slipped in her paddock and broke her hind leg, the sullen thunk of the big femur snapping, the heavy grunt as she went down. We sat together in the dust and waited for the vet, me stroking her neck, talking to her, keeping her calm. There was no saving her - her large, dark eye watching me, the needle finding the vein, the plunger pushing the drugs into her body, her eye closing. The last deep breath before she was gone. One breath alive. And then… silence.

If you let your eye wander around the page of free-writing/free-drawing, you’ll see lots of questions, connections, speculation, and rumination.

I don’t suppose I’ll wind up doing anything with this. I can’t quite imagine pulling a poem out of all that. Though, I suppose I could write about the old mare’s final moments…. maybe try to draw that miraculous eye. Or, maybe write about the miraculous eye and draw the broken bone. Maybe just walk away, walk away… take a deep breath and fully appreciate being here to take the next.