The Archeologist

...and find his way to a sentence.
Robert Hass

Her thoughts remain below the frost line

and the detritus of places and events add weight. Carrying these words, luggage with clasps, keeps the narration limited.

Years later, she will notice the tautness of a younger woman's body,recall the way she once relaxed into dance, recall the delicious taste of blackberries, and remember the cold embrace of water:

a pond with a mud bottom and lily tendrils, a lake she swam in until the sun dipped into the water, a hungry ocean's Sneaker Wave.

When she walks through piles of leaves and listens to the scrunch,

or listens to cicadas on the edge of night or hears a shadow approach she'll try to put together words to one sentence and then another until she owns a parade of words.

She wrings out the words. Sucks them dry until they illuminate her landscape.

Then with tenderness she'll author a story.