Hoard

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.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.