There may be a lot on this drawer this is now not in use:
a pocket book with ribbon to mark passages
as soon as of a few significance, a tortoiseshell comb unfortunately
fabricated from tortoise shell, a prayer e book certain
in mother-of-pearl. Mom-of-pearl.
And sounds: a blurring of bees within the air
now not heard within the wild.
The whole thing without delay, she had mentioned. All that you just
keep in mind should be written down.
Mattress linens crusing the wind, curtains flaring
past the windscreens, lilacs quickly to lie at the floor.
There was once a quickening within the middle each time I noticed him
status in a box of bloom and hum then no longer there.
The sector long gone. The home. The street now underneath a more recent street.
Timber alongside it lengthy minimize down. No cover of hope.
And the swamp? Who is aware of what turned into of it.
Skunk cabbage and buttercups, cattails,
polliwogs and crayfish with their pulse-train tune.
We stuck them in jars of pond water.
No longer for consuming, no. To look at them reside.
Wash your mom’s garments one final time and put them away—
like wrapping a scoop of snow in tissue paper.

This poem has been excerpted from the gathering You Are Right here, edited by means of Ada Limón.