crab claw, puget sound
There are three bowls--one of wire, one of wood, one of enameled tin--that contain a history embedded in things collected over the years. Three turtle shells resurrected from a cave beneath the Pedernales River, a snake skin, a deer jaw, a possum's pelvic bone...
a set of bird cards, a hand-made book, a bit of moss from a giant sequoia;
a downy owl feather, a butterfly wing, an old photo, a stone crab claw;
a clam shell, purple mollusk, and pine cone, a stone.
These are the stories I will want to remember, those coded in the language of the land, and of found things that were evidence of a secret path only I knew.
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
--Philip Larkin
