Vanitas Vanitatum et Omnia Vanitas (Vanity of Vanities and all is Vanity)
After “Vanitas” by Edward Colyer, c. 1600

Often it is a small snail shell, empty
and brittle that I look for first,

or the recently extinguished smoke
clamoring past the drapery

heavy as remorse. But neither are here.
Instead, all that curls are the edges

of musical pages, the nautilus-tipped scroll
of the violin, the bronzed femur polished

like a door knob, the urn
with serpentine handles sitting

like a crown upon the pile of all
that reminds us that we are

human. My eye must slow down.
It settles on the skull that like the sun

around all else revolves.
It is toothless, save a few, a kind

of chapel whose mouth is the door
which holds entry to all I thought I needed

to know: pulvus et umbra sumus,*
but outside the museum on a midday walk

I have no shadow. I kick at the dirt
on the road but nothing is revealed

and it is then I realize have disappeared
or maybe I never really existed.

*we are dust and shadow

—Didi Jackson

Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. After having lived most of her life in Florida, she currently lives in South Burlington, Vermont, teaching creative writing at the University of Vermont. Visit her at didi.jackson.com or @didijacksonpoet on Twitter.