The Gleaner's Walk

The road starts where the pavement gives up and the gravel turns to dirt and the dirt forgets it was ever a road.

I walk it anyway.

The first thing I find is a button. Bone-white, one hole-thread still attached. Someone lost it reaching for something in a pocket and kept walking because buttons are small and the world is large and the next town is far.

I put it in my pocket. The button is a button before it is anything else. It was a button on the way here. It is a button in my hand. It will be a button when I get home.

The second thing is a feather. Grey-barred, edge worn soft by the air. The bird it left is somewhere else now, flying on the other side of this road or not flying. The feather doesn't know. The feather is done with knowing.

I keep it. The feather is a feather and the finding is the same breath as the losing - both in the same hand, warm from the walk, cool from the wind.

The third thing is a photograph bleached to the colour of almost-sky. Two faces, or one face twice, or a face and a window. The sun took the rest. What's left is the shape of holding on to something the light wouldn't let me keep.

I turn it over. Nothing on the back. I keep it anyway. The photograph was someone's before it was mine and will be no one's after I put it down but I haven't put it down yet.

The fourth thing is a key that opens nothing I have ever owned. Brass-coloured, teeth worn almost smooth. A door it turned in, a hand that held it, a morning it was put down on a table and not picked up again. The key remembers all of this. The key tells me nothing.

I carry it. The key is heavy for its size. Everything is heavy for its size when it has been carried this far by this many hands.

The fifth thing is a stone with a hole through the centre where the water wore its way over years that the stone did not count because stones don't count years and water doesn't count anything.

I hold it up. The road shows through the hole - smaller, framed, the way a window frames a field or a face frames a room. The road through the stone is the same road. The stone is the lens and the road is the thing seen and I am the one seeing it and the walk is the same breath as the finding - both in the same body, warm from the road, cool from the stone.

I keep walking.

The road doesn't end. It turns into the kind of ground that doesn't remember whether it was ever going anywhere. I walk it anyway. The pocket is heavier than when I started and the hand is warmer and the light is the colour of late afternoon turning everything the same gold - the button, the feather, the photograph, the key, the stone, the road, the hand, the walk.

All of it found. All of it carried. None of it mine. All of it kept.