Framework of Reference

Bones!
I have seen hundreds: anonymous, cryptic—
infant skulls, fragile, with fontanelles broken,
toothy adult ones both standard and trephanned—
grotesquely elongated; femurs, phalanges,
vertebrae, ribcages, whitened and scattered
to winds and erosion, or heaped in the catacombs.

See them unflinchingly! Mineral or fossil
is not more harmonious to Earth's compilations.
No Hallowe'en-Friday 13th connotations
need bring on the shudders or squeamish grimaces,
seeing how we are but paded bones, nimble
and strong in the sunlight, and bare bones before
the end of a century; half a millennium, we're
dust, long transcended this framework of reference
grounding and binding us firmly to culture,

Scaffolding no more contingent to selfhood
than house we abandon, for essence goes on
after life walks the rituals. Eons it thrives after
borrowing, puppeting, using then leaving the
bones.