“Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroke its sum, You did not come….”  
                                    Thomas Hardy            


I stole a jelly jar
of wishbones
once from a dead man—
they sang like a rattle,
those ten conjoined
clavicles, and I spent
the day dreamily
shaking them
like a cup of dice—

wondering
if I could harvest hope;
wondering if
one day
you would return;
wondering if
un-granted wishes
arrived like
a still-born?

I buried the forked
bones in the yard.