Relic

Patricia Hooper

Here is a bird's breastbone,

the keel of a ship scrubbed clean

of its cargo and rigging, its rib cage

laid bare in this harbor of grasses.

Each morning the sun finds it

and bleaches it into a basket

the snail sleeps in, no longer

robin or finch, but a shelter

for beetles or worms. Now I place it

carefully in the garden

to lie among asters and dahlias

who drink from the sky it fell from

and sing without throats or voices

and flutter and preen without feathers

and fly in the winds of October

and die and go back to the loam.