The Bones of Oliver Hardy
When found
they will turn out not to be massive or ungainly,
but rather delicate,
like the steel girders inside a blimp.
At the Museum of Modern Man, the curator will call them
“a typical example of late Cro-Magnon.”
Reassembled in the basement, no one
will guess what they accomplished in life. Perhaps
a warrior, a cowboy, a boot-
legger, a bank president, a thief, a horn-swoggler.
No one will image
the bowler hat, the Hitler mustache, the round face,
the baggy pants, or
that the bones are incomplete, being part of a set,
the other, smaller collection of bones, missing.
But you and I (were we there)
would not be surprised if late one night in darkness
the sound of a yodel
drifted up the stairwell, or if, in the dusty
basement, the bones rose
and commenced to dance, each foot
striking the floor like moonlight on a new tin roof.
(from G. W. Review, Spring, 1993)
