Bone-Memory

By David Anson Lee

The bones remember more than flesh allows:

Each rib a record of a whispered past,

A femur etched with stories time endows,

And marrow holds the tales that ever last.

A finger bends, recalling winter’s chill,

The skull retains both laughter and the pain,

The spine maps valleys, streams, and distant hill,

Where tiny fractures teach what loss can gain.

Through generations, silent echoes speak,

A lineage traced in calcium and light;

The memory of mouths that could not speak

Now hums beneath my hands in quiet rite.

I cradle ancestry within my frame,

The skeleton: a library without name.

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David Anson Lee is a physician and poet based in Texas, whose work weaves together medicine, philosophy, and Native American heritage. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he explores identity, memory, mortality, and the human condition through a lens shaped by both clinical practice and philosophical inquiry. His poetry has appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, The Scarred Tree, and Braided Way.