What the Frost Casts Up

A crown of handmade nails, as though there were a house here once, burned, where we’ve gardened for fifteen years; the ceramic top of an ancient fuse; this spring the tiny head of a plastic doll— not much compared to what they find in England, where every now and then a coin of the Roman emperors, Severus or Constantius, works its way up, but something, as though nothing we’ve ever touched wants to stay in the earth, the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost or cast away, as though they couldn’t bear the parting, or because they are the only messengers from lives that were important once, waiting for the power of the frost to move them to the mercy of our hands.