IN A THOUSAND YEARS

should someone unearth
the wedding band
cushioned in loam,
just as dazzling 
as the day it was cast, 
polished, slipped 
on a finger 
for the first time,  
what will they think? 

When they brush 
away the dark soil, 
will they believe 
a woman had been careless 
as she walked 
beneath the ginkgoes; 

or luckless 
when she set 
the ring on a sill,
and spied by a magpie, 
lifted to a nest among leaves, 
gold, yet weightless as breath, 
before tumbling
into the steady
accretion of years; 

or lucky  
she’d discarded
the token in long grass
after betrayal, 
discovering it meant nothing 
but lost time?

   Or it could be 
something else entirely:
two people who walked 
for miles, a lifetime, 
hands laced, in search 
of sweet pea blossoms, 
who sat down to rest, 
and after eternity’s blink,
found themselves earth, 
sifted between fingers.    

All possible, one no more 
probable than the next,
the artifact’s glitter 
revealing so little truth
of a life, its rich universe.

Diana Dinverno’s work has appeared in Peacock Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Orange Blossom Review, Panoply Magazine, The MacGuffin, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, American Fiction—Volume 15:The Best Unpublished Stories by New and Emerging Writers, and other publications. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Michigan Poetry Society’s 2019 Margo LaGatutta Memorial Award, the Barbara Sykes Memorial Humor Poem Prize, and nominated for Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net 2020. Diana writes and practices law in Southeastern Michigan.