The Eulogy of a Taxidermied Elk Skull

I wonder if I’ll ever be more than a 

taxidermied skull of an Irish elk

hanging from a ceiling with fractured bones,

oleanders growing in the cracks,

floral overgrowing along the carcass. 

 

You’d watch it like a predator stalking its prey.

Still and holy.

Waxing and waning.

Watching like a lonely moon,

circulating an abandoned planet.

Am I like the taxidermied skull of an Irish elk

with overgrown antlers 

getting entangled in the trees? 

Too large to support my head

as I sink deeper and deeper 

into the sea.

Do my eyes match the hollowed-out gaze

of the skull of an Irish elk? 

Dulled out,

fragmented remains of a life once lived.

Do you love me 

like you love

the taxidermied skull of an Irish elk?

Do you pray to its skeletal remains like a lost deity?

Am I nothing but a silhouette?

Not even your shadow?

 

Maybe I am nothing but a skull hanging from a ceiling,

A forgotten frame 

ith cracked antlers and 

blood leaking from the roots.

 

I am the taxidermied skull of an Irish elk.

I am the bindings of orthogenesis theory.

The long since abandoned theory

of how the Irish elk went extinct.