where a thick brown cord of water
surges through the Four Corners
we carried the dried umbilical cord
mailed all the way from California,
delivered by a stranger's hand,
and brought it here
for sacred burial.
In a cloth pouch we tossed a pinch
of pollen, a pinch of sand, clay
lifted from those crosshairs
where four states come together,
mixed it all with the piece of Hannah
so she might find this place
though she had never
even to this day touched
these sacred corners.
We laid the pouch in a shallow hole
and heaped the world back in upon her.
Nowhere else could have been any better.
Nowhere else could have brought
her mother home to us too.
We heaped the earth
then pressed it flat,
scratched the letter H twice
on a nearby rock that had
for the last million years
been struggling toward the light.