To the wildflower pressed against

page 222, just south of "Italy"

and half-obscuring "itch"

as I expose the page

a flake of your torn blossom

adheres, feebly, to 223

and I thank you, no longer wild,

disconnected indigo filament

linking "jocular" to "job"

Spectators, to enter the kingdom of grief,

simply grasp the smooth clay mouse a mother

shaped with her own quick fingers four decades ago,

stroke its chestnut glaze and examine the teenage initials

etched into the flat, rough underside on which it sits,

the clay defined by the deep interior tear space

of two hands married by prayer or cupping a frigid spring,

your hands asking when did she last caress another hand,

anything onion shaped, if memory’s eye doesn’t turn

the lens away, smarting, careful not to drop the two pounds

now hefted in your hand, the weight of her idea,

maybe less, her DNA shaping the fate of your own palm,

nails, creases, fingers, their softness, what they like to touch,

by what connection and current they’re fired by the brain,

her wit and intellect yours when you remember so much hope,

not overcome by its opposite, the bed, the stillness,

her waxen cadaver your mold to be filled with annual loss,

the blood finally at rest and blackening, the skin

shadowed where the underside touches cool sheets,

the body hardening, not quite becoming gray and brittle

before being fired, the clay, the mouse, the knob adjusted

to increase the flame, the house adjusted, weightless,

like sheets loosened by wind every unacceptable memory

released, returned, the paperweight finally useless,

nothing for a desk now deep on the seafloor, among clouds,

unable to hold down anything, keep you here or steady.