The Heart's Archaeology

By Maudelle Driskell Maudelle Driskell
On some fundless expedition,
you discover it beneath
a pyracantha bush
carved from the hip bone
of a long-extinct herbivore
that walked the plains on legs
a story tall. An ocarina of bone
drilled and shaped laboriously
with tools too soft to be efficient
by one primitive musician
spending night after night
squatting by the fire.
No instrument of percussion:
place this against your lips,
fill it from your lungs to sound
a note winding double helix, solo
and thready calling to the pack.

Source: Poetry (February 2000).

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This poem originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of Poetry magazine

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February 2000

Biography

Poet Maudelle Driskell received her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. She was a 1999 recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, and her poems have been published in the Cortland Review, Kenyon Review, and New Orleans Review. She lives in Atlanta.


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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Music, Arts & Sciences, Mythology & Folklore

POET’S REGION U.S., Southern

Poetic Terms Imagery, Free Verse

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