Christopher T. George

Receptacle

You desired to make me your receptacle
for all you knew. No child of your own,
you meant to pass to me your lifetime’s
knowledge of history, flora, and fauna.
So you introduced to me by its Latin name,
a rare speckled orchid on St. Aldhelm’s Head,
by the side of the hermit’s ruined chapel.
Named the swirling birds, cormorants, auks,
as we hiked along Beeny Cliff, the waters
below us twinkling with a million suns.
You prepared the strains of knowledge
like skeins of wool at a spinning wheel,
sheep’s wool caught in clifftop barbed wire.
We slid down the shale to Kimmeridge Bay
seeking fossil ammonites and trilobites,
the world’s wisdom in a raptosaur’s tooth.