Uncovering A Marble

Double-dug, fifteen feet square,
my kitchen garden plot was ready to
receive the roots and stalks of nightshade, shoots,
pods, grasses, legumes — all prepared

to settle in the divots of Appalachian
soil and send their roots far down to find
the lurking nutrients and bring them back
to where the nearby star can work its wonders,

spreading supper on the ground before us.
But as I hoed the clods into a finer
loam, my blade produced a clink and then

laid bare a clear sphere streaked through with green,
the green of sage or sea-foam swirls. I brushed
it clean and held it to the growing light,
feeling like a jove about to rest

before creating whales and Europeans to
teem across the surface of my world.
And then I clutched it, looking down upon
the earth I’d dug, attempting to return

in time to when a boy had squatted in
this place and thumbed his marbles in the very
dirt where I was standing, old, a man
who long ago left behind his toys.

~ S.K. Orr