Uknown Artist, Decorated Border with a Bird and Strawberries, c. 1460-1470, Paris, France
Tempera colors, gold leaf, and gold paint on parchment
Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program
We capture box turtles from wild strawberry patches. Keep things until we don’t anymore. Fireflies in wooden boxes. I’m trying to re-learn myself. The stiff, sleek fur of a doe. I touch everything and then I don’t. I move somewhere all the plants are thorns and animals off in the distance. The sun lays everything bare. If I put my foot into a muddy stream, I’d be lost all over again—a crawfish dropped in rapids, a pintail shot from the sky. I can’t keep remembering. Dogwood blossoms and lawn mowers sawing through the afternoon. A horse thrashes its head up and down, refusing the bit. Garden spray on snapdragons. Under this ground is more ground. Under the more ground is more ground still. How far back until I arrive on a boat, sick and holding my bible. I’ll build a whole religion here, a life, a barn, a chair to sit on. Mice in the birdseed canister. The coal train is coming and there’s our grandfather sprinting towards the tracks.