A twenty-inch feather with black bars. Stones I’ve picked up.
An acorn with its cap beside it like a cup.

Chunks of gypsum from a mine I explored,
a postcard of a heron—eye glittering, not bored.

Pens and pencils nestled in a metal box.
A magnifying glass for peering at flowers and rocks.

A clump of lichen, gray-blue, smelling like smoke.
One pressed leaf with a black spot—from an eighty-foot oak.

Dusty gold wing of a half-eaten moth—
so slender it wriggled in, hid under a cloth.

A three-pronged branch tip—with unopened buds.
Whatever ripe swelling, they ended up duds.

Ahead through the glass stand our woods going bare—
pine needles, dappled ground, color smearing the air.