It's Still Life

Dead Birds and Relics

Moths and flames and curiosity;
I was drawn to that boxy-solid
museum with its grey dullness,
and its terraced strong-arm steps
for catching slips and stumbles
during white-mantled weather.

Those were my impressionist days
when the world was dipped in a blur,
and the busy periphery yielded to
burdenous double-door brass knobs
bold as a blazing crest, and beyond
that glass cabinets in tender need
of a clean from musty turning-to-dirt
and fretful sleepy smell.

And the polished scrub oak floor
was an ancient deep breath like
you’d expect from silent rain.
But I’ll mostly remember
the ancient coins, a glint
like an atoll’s stainless sand.

Roman coins and relics set next
to dead birds and pinned moths
and glassy-eyed badgers. I sat
on a child-size, cut cedar bench,
my imagination suspended in the moment,
in the dull light, in the whale’s
jaw bone, and a dinosaur’s foot.

Note: This is getting a major chop at the first opportunity. It’s so heavy on modifiers that it makes me want to … I don’t know, do something to it. Burn it maybe. Written for dVerse’s Impressionist’s prompt, and Miz Quickly’s Testing Modifiers