I am thinking of the hand I found in Indiana, epicenter of this naturalist soul-to-be.  I was ten, younger, when I found the hand, laid it to rest in what I called the “dead box” we found in an ancient trunk in the loft of that massive red barn on the hillside where I watched cattle slain and ponies bred.

I was walking the fence line. It was summer. Dry weeds crumpled to dust along the foot and cow paths.  And then I saw it.  The hand on the ground. A perfect bone of a hand.  A fairy hand.

Fifty-one years I have kept the dead box and the hand and everything else I have found.  Years and years, in writing workshops, I have handed out each object to a stranger,  never wondering why I trusted these beautiful things from the world past with people I did not know. But always there is this giving back and forth — those who share my awe silent over the changed deserts of their linoleum desks. I am always astounded how poetry starts anywhere and takes you everywhere.

Bird’s nest so perfect
so round
woven of mane and tail hair
from my childhood ponies.
Owl pellet and yellow mouse teeth
and white bird claw and, oh,
the mollusk shell  
open-mouthed
where a petrified snail
curled inside.
And all the pale shells
of blue and speckled dust
I’ve lost and that Indiana flint
with yellow crystal
I found near the creek I barely
remember now except
a bulldozer tore that day
its red dirt. And here
the chrysalis
from my father’s pond
attached to a twig
since I was the girl
I will never be again–
what I swing and tremble
until it lives.

Poet Patricia Dubrava, in her blog, Holding the Light, posted a wonderful poem and poetry prompt and that’s what got me going! Hearing the Canadas.

My poetry chapbook, Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a Pandemic, will be published this spring by Finishing Line press. Just received the contract. More as I know it.