The Family Bone

Crawling through a long swamp after growing up among jackals,
I came upon a house bone, relic of a family that had thrived at some point
before it vanished into the muck.

I put the bone in my hip pocket (after tossing the flask aside)
and carried it back to where I could plant it in dry rich sand.
If a bone could be a seed, I reasoned, it might grow into a home.

But all the bone did was stick up where I could trip over it
and I fell often, and hard, and bruised myself yellow and brown
and ached every time for a long time, so that I cursed the very idea

of home.  I tried to fertilize it and it did nothing.  I tried
to redesign my own place around it, stared at the blueprints
till they bled, and still the home I desired would not rise.

So I go back into the swamp every day and slop around seeking
that flask I dropped a while back.  If I see another bone,
I leave it there.  Better it should rot unaided by my fumblings.