Souvenir
By Kate Middleton
Published 1 January 2021
What else fashioned from earth survives?
Bone white; fired terracotta;
trickster raven black with turquoise eyes.
The geometric autograph of pueblo.
I can read some of those angles
in the palm of my hand: there in clay
and here in the palest nectarine flesh
of my broken-in child hands
—hands that chose the modest bowl
for a gift. The bowl’s turquoise eyes
alert to passage, unblinking as they are sunk
into a cardboard box. Paid in cash.
—Bought from hand that once closed
around its clay, moist, as if in prayer;
later wrapped it as roughly
as any piece of broken earth.