The Old Museum
The shrunken head is no longer on display.
He is buried under sensitivities and recognitions.
Locked away by regulations.
They cannot return him to himself in the Amazon.
So, he lies in the attic looking toward eternity
in a locked, dusty cabinet––
where even touring groups of writers are forbidden to ask.
In 1950, he stood proudly in a glass case
on a pedestal
just inside the South Seas room.
Marked only “Bolivian Shrunken Head”.
The boy saw first black coal.
Then, shocked, and on his toes, he made out lips sewed shut
hair too long for the pruned face.
Horror to mystery to scientific curiosity.
What was he like and how did this happen?
Who would shrink him and why?
Geography, anthropology
in a rectangular room.
Gargoyle carved war clubs
and a big racket like spiked loop
to snare and spear him.
And shrink his head to hang on your hut.
Later, he would guard the top
of the wide marble stairs of a quiet
grey, concrete
mid-western Museum.
Not air conditioned,
but free for any kid
to walk in without
somebody
to pay $9.
Rectangular rooms
with glowing minerals,
stuffed birds and bison
and mastodon skeletons.
See for yourself.
And the canteens and knives
and aviator’s helmets
that our fathers and grandfathers
carried in their wars against
the Confederates and Kaisers
and Nazis.
They told us their stories
about losing a hand
in the Battle of the Bulge
or falling out of the skies over France.
And how, really,
the great General Leonard Wood
won The First War,
not ‘Black Jack’ Pershing.
Monumental, glass
with a magnate’s name,
carousels,
and a coffee shop;
a view of the river
and lines waiting to view
carefully planned
traveling exhibits.
The new museum speaks
through story cards,
directional signs and docents
to those with $9
for a children’s book.
-Geoffrey L. Gillis, P.L.L.C.
The author first saw the light of day at 6:00 AM on a Sunday morning under the dome of the old St. Mary’s hospital, three blocks from the then new Old Museum. Later Sundays, after church, lunch was at the Holly House restaurant; the foundations of which lie unexcavated under the Westminister Presbyterian Church parking lot across from the Old Museum. It had a toy box. After Sunday lunch, the boy expanded his Knowledge of the Universe by swimming under the whale skeleton in the Old Museum. For free.
He graduated from the late, honorable South High School where the late Hon. Gerald R. Ford was his graduation speaker; and went on to win 3rd Prize in the 1979 Dyer-Ives Poetry Contest. He lives on College Avenue about three blocks from the Old Museum to which he and his children used to walk. He’s still there; but the Old Museum is gone. He hopes the fellow whose head was shrunk got to enjoy a drink and laugh with his friends.
Wonderful poem! A great tribute to the importance of preserving history to motivate and stimulate creative thinking as well as instill a sense of wonder and curiosity in the younger generation.
I remember the Saturday movies. I think they cost 5 cents. They may have been free. I just remember not being able to afford to go very often. If I close my eyes, I can still see the main entrance and the lobby.