In a Portsmouth Museum

written thursday, on the drive back from a field trip to Portsmouth, UK. feel free to comment if you want to discuss the poem with me.

In a Portsmouth Museum

Finish your lemon ices, and we’ll move

to the next room. There, behind

the glass, are genuine musket balls,

and canons are past the tea shop, along

the beige wall. Rosary beads on that

table were excavated just last summer.

Scuba divers carved them out

from bedrock-- covered in layers of silt. 

Delicate work,   wresting

them from all those bony fingers.

Over here are surgeon's tools.

A quick chap could

amputate your arm in

three minutes-- sawing your

bone in two with jagged

knives.    They couldn’t give

you brandy, or you’d

hemorrhage, and that’d be

the end of you,   unless someone

happens to paint your

portrait as you lay gasping

through your shattered lung, or

jots down a few romantic

lines about you, or digs 

up your skull 

a hundred years later for

a museum display.

If you’d kindly step inside

the doors, I’ll continue with the tour.