Bone Song

Half buried in the crudely flailed hedgerow I found a piece of wildest porcelain. It were his teeth who talked me in, upturned they were bizarre amongst the small greening ways of February. It always amazes me how our eyes can seek out what is odd even in nature when everything is odd in it's own way. I stooped to free it from the bank, the slicing bone atop its skull slipped out of its red clay bed with a satisfyingly sharp sound. As I brought it closer the bitter wind found it and for the briefest time played a tune through one of its orifices. His teeth had talked me in and now he played me a bone song, I knew this one was a storyteller. I felt that frantic pin prick of hope you see in films when someone flutters their eyelids in a hospital bed. Not that I thought him alive I just desperately wanted the tune to play out but he was done with sound and it was not to be. So I sat with him as long as my remaining warmth would allow and set him upon a dead gate to look out over the valley he had once belonged. I began to wonder where his familiar pathways were? where had he known? At what turn in the track did he always hunker from danger? Do the dogs sleep soundly now his heavy feet do not pass by the barn door? Which roots meant home was not far? What had his pace felt like that last night when he wandered into death?