A clay shard, found at the edge of where the path ends. The shard remembers the bowl it was, faintly, in the curve of its inner glaze.
things become beautiful by being broken, and useful by being mended.
A clay shard, found at the edge of where the path ends. The shard remembers the bowl it was, faintly, in the curve of its inner glaze.
moth wing — left on the sill
the lamp at the end of the hallway was on all winter. nobody asked who left it on.
brass timepiece, stopped
A maple key landed on the page and stayed long enough to be measured. samara · 0.31g · drift 4.7° — and then it left, taking its weight with it.
key — for which door no one remembers
In the third week of patient watching, the lichen wrote a sentence on the south wall. We did not translate it. We simply let it be a sentence.
maidenhair — observed daily for nine weeks
A pause is not a silence; a pause is a syllable.
The tea grew cold in the cup. The cup grew warm in the hand. The hand grew quiet in the lap. The lap grew patient in the chair. The chair grew old in the room.
river-smoothed stone
The greenhouse glass had a single crack at the corner. The crack let in rain. The rain let in moss. The moss let in time. The time let in everything that came after.
a small clear thing is worth more than a large unclear one.
brass theodolite — calibrated 1971
The transit eyepiece holds a single hair of platinum across its center. When a star drifts through, the hair does not notice. The star does not notice the hair. We notice both, and the noticing is the instrument.
marine chronometer, wound only at solstice
aneroid — the needle has always been honest
A reading is a kind of prayer.
At 04:14 the dew point and the air temperature crossed each other on the chart. For four minutes there was no difference between the air and the water in the air. The fern remembered it. We did not.
a small heartbeat, repeating
The hairline crack across the bezel is older than any of us. It will outlast us, too.
a single hair of platinum
a seed too small to plant, kept anyway
the unattributed paragraph in the margin of a book whose binding had failed in 1962
A child's drawing of a hand, traced on green paper. The child is now eighty-one. The paper is now nothing. The drawing remains, by accident, in this drawer.
a smooth stone the size of an eye
There are three thousand small things in this room. We have catalogued forty-one of them. The other two thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine wait, patient as moss, for their turn to be looked at.
three mendings, in gold, on a saucer
a pressed fern, 1971
water, in a small jar, untouched
a tick, between two ticks
A length of brass wire bent into the shape a hand makes when it has just released something it did not want to release.
In the bottom drawer, behind the third folder, an envelope. In the envelope, a feather. The feather is grey, slightly curved, and longer than you expect. We have never asked from which bird.
eyelash, accidentally
A folded scrap of newsprint announcing a public lecture on lichens that took place in 1948. Admission, two yen. Refreshments served. The lecturer's name has been worn off by hands.
a maple key, kept
a single button, mother-of-pearl
a wishbone, dried
A small bell, the size of a thimble, with a tongue of beaten copper. It is silent unless held. When held it sings exactly one note, and the note is the note of an empty room at dusk.
a single leaf, floating
light, but not much
nothing further to say