Sympathetic Magic

Niches

28 Niches ~ The split husk of a locust latches to the burr oak’s bark. In the upper limbs squirrels clack their castanets as the reborn throb and keen through the unevening hours. 29 ~ The dog sniffs a fallen nest at the sidewalk’s edge. Threaded through the twigs, a flag, the tiny kind often seen at graves and parades. 30 ~ Found in a New Mexico cave, a hunting net spun from hanks of human hair lay four hundred years in a pit where it was left for blessing. The mile and a half of cordage required sixty-nine full heads of hair, yet its maker never returned for it. 31 ~ The late sun cast an archipelago of light in the campyard at Terezín. I stooped to fill a film canister with dirt. Tasting the dust on my tongue, I knuckled grit from my watery eyes. 32 ~ In the little fort by the river we kept a cache of musty mattress batting to nestle the fine bones of mice and rusted railroad ties and acorn caps that we fitted on our fingertips. 33 ~ Walking the Flint Hills with Harley, we crouched down to find crinoids, those chalky fossils dislodged from their limestone seabed, gave them to Bill, who pocketed them to bring to his daughter to string together, with her small, sure hands, a necklace. 34 ~ A spider tatting a hammock in the lintel attempts to gather light in its gauze. 35 ~ Four days in the Holy Cross, 11,000 feet, and we met no one. Hiking the ridge above camp we could see down to the rock from which Elizabeth took her yawping leap into the frigid Josephine. Hidden in the cairn at the peak we found a jar, a small tablet inside of it, and written on a page, the name of a friend. The other day I read that a small plane crashed there in the scree. 36 ~ In the grotto where Bernadette knelt to place her hands in the gouting wound of the Pyrenees, to lift her eyes to the eternal mother, the spring purls into jugs and vials, into our cupped hands. There is enough water for everyone to have as much as they want. 37 ~ At dawn of spring equinox the sun glisters forth through the door of the great kiva. Be it this way. ...