EARBONE

She holds the whalebone up to the light
until it silhouettes; a black chunk
of skeleton, hugged by our bright electricity.
It’s fifteen million years old. It dwarfs
the nineteenth century mantel with its age,
casts a shadow of colossal time
over the antique clock. And we stare
into the possibility of its life before us,
at a vague shape of what it might have carried,
the great brain it once sat beside.

She turns to me, her eyes glazed by the wonder
of what she holds in her hand
and asks if we can find the rest.