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.