Once upon two careful hands,
the dirt-smudged frame
is slowly set on to the bland
brown wooden desk.

Inch by inch, the dusty coat
unpeels itself. Underneath
reveals white, while two eyes float
over the text

and diagrams. Mhmm, this
is unique, a focused face
says. It's what we've missed
it's what was lost

when we didn't know we had
anything to lose. A ball
in tall grass. It hands
over foreign linguistics,

an old clock and its tick.
It's a mud-caked antique,
a sedimentary-thick
fragment of earth,

Blood-lined inside, not from
red cells but the story
it carries, still lit, still one.
A beginning of sorts.--

A glimpse from a time when
life was still crowning,
now parent of an empty den
or nest. If only it

would fill in the blanks. It
has snapped apart at the seams.
Reassembling it bit by bit,
the pieces connect and then speak.