Walking Reliquary Primitive, and so, face of stromatolite, glottal-stop cilia, pre-Cambrian gut. Derivative, and so, grackle’s nest mate, jackal’s familiar. Nose like a nocked arrow, eyes like a lemur’s, only lonelier. Fatuous, and so, bag of bones, old bones, some close to broken, others opposable. Scot organs and pipes, blood of a Choctaw, stretched skin of a Norse war drum. Inattentive, and so, collapse at the waterhole, hair growing gray like the seat of a prayer bench. Ebullient, and so, grief of a treed raccoon, arms like a starfish. Grin like the wolves at a timberline. Acquisitive, and so, Isles of Langerhorn, rings of wild cypress, rings of dead Popes.   Transitory, and so, brain of an ocelot, brain of a cockatoo, mind of a lilac. Heretical, and so, postprandial half-life, quarterstaffs for thighs, three-fourths of a pumpkin’s DNA. Incorruptible, and so, knuckles like gambling stones, shroud of a leper, eggs like a fossil find. Redeemable, and so, water-logged flesh, airborne ash, sedimentary compression. ~~~~~~~ The title is taken from a line in G. C. Waldrep’s poem, Confessions of the Mouse King.