This piece was inspired after reading the legend of The Bone Woman in Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Bone Woman
Old, bent beneath
her burden of twigs
and branches, seemingly
bleached to color of bones.
Have caught glimpses
of her in distance, moving
in dust at side of road,
perched atop her collection
in back of battered
burned out pick-up truck.
Wonder if someday
she’ll find my bones
cleansed by a keening
wind of all flesh and muscle.
Sort out delicate pieces
of fingers that hold this pen,
find them worthy of being
tied into her bundle. Later
see in them, once again,
movement of her own music.
Elizabeth Crawford
*Originally published in Singing Over The Bones 2002.
Soul's Music 
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I really liked the contrast of the old woman picking over bones and the young dancer who dances to her own inner voice.
Thank you Marian. I’m glad someone took the time to remark on the contrast. It took me a while to find a last line that invited more, and would walk me into another poem. But when I saw this one the last line immediately started singing in my ear. The Bone Woman is an old legend, but the struggling dancer is as well, in her own way. For each of us, the finding of what moves us most deeply is, I think, the completion of the hope in this poem. The Bone Woman sings the bones back to life, and The Dancer inspires more life as well. I believe they are links in the same chain.
Elizabeth
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