Bracelet

by Greg Michaelson

We walk along the beach at Golspie,
young Finn and I.
Finn is flying my ladybird kite,
a fiftieth birthday present.

The wind drops.
The kite drops.

Finn rescues the kite from the waves.
I reel up the string
and wrap it in the sails,
and cram the kite
into the orange draw-string nylon bag.

We head back down the beach,
gathering limpet shells with holes
into my green woolly hat.
Finn scours the strand,
whooping with each new find.
 
On a table in the front bedroom,
of our main door tenement flat,
I array the shells in order,
from largest to smallest,
and string them
onto a length of leather cord.

In the museum basement,
in a glass fronted box,
on the left forearm of a man of brass,
is a bracelet:
each bead whittled from sea bleached bone,
in a northern island village of stone
some five thousand year ago.

Who made the bracelet?