Graduating to Wet Stones

Gathering The Bones for Kathelyn Kay I am taken by how deeply my mother digs planting bulbs for Spring. I imagine her digging down to a two-million-year-old woman, who is stringing bones that tinkle like glass. There in the blackened soil she has discovered a peace, her two-million-year- old woman chanting a creation hymn over the bones. Under flat plains, dense woodlands and deserts, beneath our backyards and gardens, are homes for the two-million-year-old woman. When she is lost, I find my mother hands deep in the earth, digging down to the old woman who always lives among the frangible bones of the earth. She calls to me, tells me to sift the dirt and see what I can find. She says it is the only work we have to do, gathering the bones.

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