This ring, made from the vertebra and rib
Of the diamondback I found beneath the shed
Coiled upon itself and ages dead
(The rattle hung above the empty crib),
Is all the remnant of its brilliant skins.
Wear it in memory of our innocence.
Todd Hearon’s new poems appear in AGNI, Arts & Letters, The Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Literary Imagination, New Ohio Review, The Southern Review, and Southwest Review. His first book of poems, Strange Land, won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series Prize and was published in 2010. He’s the recipient of a PEN New England “Discovery” Award, the Friends of Literature Prize from Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundation, and the Rumi Prize for Poetry. He lives in Exeter, New Hampshire, with his wife, the poet Maggie Dietz, and their twins. (updated 2/2012)