The Bone Mountain

Imagine 
taking all the bones 
humanity has ever held 
between  tendon  and muscle, 
and imagine - just imagine, just 
for a second - throwing them 
into the ocean: that's 107 billion,

multiplied by 206: that's a lot of bones.
They would sink to  the bottom, some 
more porous, some now more like powdered 
husk, and form a great white hulk; like 
a dead white shark, lying still and 
quiet - but still predatory - on the seabed.

And in a few tens of millions of years, 
buckled, pushed up on a plate boundary, would 
come the great white mountain - The Bone Mountain - 
fonting, ribboning and fountaining its white crust. And, 
like the half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale, will be

writ on it, 'We were here. Yes, we were.'
But the Mountain would stand ominously silent:
capped with a crown of mute skull, fog-hugged;
the other creatures too fearful

and too superstitious
to approach 
it.