BEDS: N 42° 44’ 33” / E 84° 29’ 47”

BY DIVY A V IC TOR

We are on our knees. We are saying that the tulips have had it hard this week. We are saying
something about the brightness & the dryness & we are saying we hope it will change. I press a
finger into the loam, flick the dust on my jeans. We are listening to the snip of shears. I pick up a
smooth, small disc of pink Sioux quartz, hold it like an avian heart in the palm. A disc slipped &
beating from a time when all of North America was under sea. My finger walks the buttery vein that
parses the stone in two & then in four. Its edges are under siege; its end at the foot of suburban
perennials. Do you have stones, someone is asking me. Where you are from, do you have stones, like
these. We have purple sunbirds, I am saying, & their hearts have four rooms, one for every answer to
questions like these.