Archaeology of the front yard.
With heavy hands we spread the dead
chips across the lawn. Each piece splits
the glove just enough for us to get a feel
for what the wood used to be: some cell
in a tall tree, somewhere in a crowded
forest. A few are stained in blood
the color of cooked earth, because I was
careless in caressing one or two bare-
handed. Look here, on the right hand:
how this wound, puncturing earthen skin,
spurts out a little red the exact shape
of the piece that pierced it. And there on
the ground the culprit lies, waiting
its turn to sink into the soil, unheard
and unseen until the healed hand will
turn it over between this fall and the fall
to come for another scattering of the dead.
Notes
I wrote this poem a few days before the beginning of fall as my parents decided to mulch the front yard. Thanks to Punam (via dVerse) for the invitation to share it more widely!
Between Two Rivers 
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