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.
