Gaping walnut shells

gleaned from harrowed earth.

Rounded flint stones rolled by rain and wind.

A partial shell ear

encrusted spirals

and the tracery of a wintered maple leaf.

 

A rusted bobbin

a kitten’s lost toy,

a tiny green origami bird,

weathered glass fragments

a single earring

and a pair of blue plastic action man bootees.

 

Along with a jay’s

shimmering cobalt

feather, these random oddments

my found storybook

compartmented. Some

found at the edge of fields or freshly dug black soil

 

where marbles glint low,

as fingers scrub off

long years of weed-blocked obscurity,

and brittle oyster

shells reveal a past;

this fertile blackness once the host of ancient seas.