In November through the dusk and reek of fallen leaves
you take me down a path to the field
along one edge
the bark of the swamp maples
freshly scarred
by the antlers of deer in rut
Where the ground is broken you stop
and begin to walk slowly down the furrows
head bent, your eyes working over the ground
you will find one piece
quartz, whole
the shape you are looking for
you wash it in your mouth
it comes clean off your tongue like a language
you hand it to me and go on
Year after year you will bring me back to walk
this same field and as they rise through the earth to your feet
you will wash them in your mouth
and put them in my hand
smooth ancient bits of a world laid down
rising up again now
after the stalks have been cut
the ground torn up by the plow
Dawn Tripp’s fourth novel, Georgia, was a national bestseller, finalist for the 2016 New England Book Award, and winner of the 2017 Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. An earlier novel, The Season of Open Water, won the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Conjunctions, AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Gay Magazine, and elsewhere, as well as on NPR. She lives in Massachusetts. (updated 4/2020)