Out of its waxed and rotted strings
it unfolded, shedding earth
as a sleeping horse’s flank sheds flies,
so soft in our hands it felt like slipping
to catch it, a sudden more silver
even than the birches’ sentinel.
No one named who must have buried it,
some rich woman we imagined
her furs and pearls and papers outlasting
even as time ate their tarnish green,
their ink to rust, her name to sap
rising like a candle’s year-lit flame.
Nothing else yielded
to our entreaties, the smallest coin
of mute animals’ bones.
By other trains, by lot, I brought it
the stranger in my satchel
between spools of Kodachrome
home, deep-ruffled in its shine
as the bridge-trussed harbor
spreading its seal-backed swell out to the sea.
The nights you dream
the black-barbed names of borders,
its weight will buoy you to this chosen shore.