We keep things in drawers after we’ve pared them down
and turned them into miniatures: stamps, folded letters,
photographs— one of them shows there used to be a fountain
in the middle of the lake (in summer, a ring of lights
flashed at its base like fireflies). There’s a matchbox
from a museum in Prague that someone else (not us)
has visited; a baby tooth, a hair pick of coiled silver.
There are cords green as bottle glass, buttons from old coats
that have departed this world of usefulness and rue. There’s a pen
with a tip shaped like a lily. There are shells that we picked
from the littered shore, stones we’ve arranged on the sill—
citadels of some hidden city now overgrown with grass.
[LAG-signature date=”08 19 2013″ url=”http://morningporch.com/2013/08/159123366/?fb_source=pubv1″]