Amid foot traffic and cars, morning sun blares off storefront windows
while workers are digging up the sidewalk. Waist-deep in the ground,
one of them holds something up for the others to see.
Everything halts as they inspect it: round, crusted with earth, crumbling.
Even the pigeons seem curious, gathering at the lip of the hole,
adjusting their footing on the spill of rocks to crowd in for a look.
Look how carefully the workers hold their discovery,
passing it back and forth, no one wanting to set it on the ground,
the tone of their voices tense as they discuss what it is, what to do.
I can't make out their words, but I am thinking about an actor
who bequeathed his own skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company
to serve as Yorick's in the graveyard scene,
wanting perhaps to serve later Hamlets in this modest way,
having spent many nights holding up a plaster copy
and looking deep into the empty eye sockets, open jaw.
Buried underground, what if we are just as lonely. Surely
in death we are still misunderstood. Too brittle to use on stage,
the actor's skull was put away in a glass case.