I was reading an article

Julia Butterfly Hill   now older      old as me now

saying They cut Luna down            Now I call her Flattie

and in the accompanying photograph      a stump

coffee table wide and sleek on the forest floor with Julia behind

and arrayed with my recently dead mother’s painted gourd ducks

which were turtles in their marked shells

all manner of totem creatures                   companion species

and I said to my sister These were hers    These were not hers

it was a grave site

“I was reading an article” first appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, 36.2.