The Trail of an Altar

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I walk the river, the road, the sidewalk. I wander the woods, the beach, the border. My pockets get filled with pieces of someone else's time. All the while, my time has been spent in idle movement, tracing lines of others' paths. This is the wandering work of the artist. I bring nothing and what I take away I am saving from infinite unknown. When I'm cleaning the pieces and saving them, arranging them with the others, the story of each time unit passes through my hands to what's in them. They talk, pieces of stories. Most often they just whisper of a snapshot. You can't even say how long it lasted. But you know how you felt, you know who you were with. You remember what you were talking about. The song that was playing stings your heart, in a good way, even if it was bad. The smell of creosote in the air means the ground was wet, but just for a flash. The pieces of wire themselves, I have brought home. Just like they cinch up the water of a rio grande, they hold the other pieces together. I tell the story into these pieces that went into my pockets and then told a poem when they were laid out to be. I still have a single earring. It is so exquisite but it hasn't gone into an altar yet. It hasn't been called up. I figure it will be when somewhere far away, someone steps just next to the other one, pressed into mud. With their fingernail they will gently lift it out. They will think they found something that tells a story about a moment.