The Garden of Eden

Today when the ground was no longer

too wet to work and the world was all lilac

perfume, I pulled my scuffle hoe hard

through the clay’s crust and heard

the blade scrape metal and earth.

I believed the sound came from nothing

more than a buried beer can tab

I dropped while foraging through

lettuce and sugar peas last spring.

But what surfaced from the fresh manure

was my lost wedding band, buried for years

in earth that nurtures Love-Lies-Bleeding,

a ring from a thirty-year marriage, rescued

from the filth of paradise, hosed off, shining,

my cracked fingernails caked with dirt.