Sharon Olds Quote

The RelicsI slipped them into my friend’s palm — the tiny crucifix, and dove,from off my mother’s pendant watch — and I asked her to walk them up through the brushtoward timberline, and find a placeto hurl them, for safekeeping. Now,she writes, I walked up the canyon at dusk,warm, with a touch of fall blowing down the canyon,came to an outcrop, above a steepdrop — far below, a seasonalcreek, green willows. I stood on a boulderand held out my hand. I wished your mother all thelove in the world, and I sent the talismansflying off the cliff. They were so small,and the wind was blowing, so I never saw orheard them land. My mother is whereI cannot find her, she is gone beyondrecall, she lies in her sterling shapeslight as the most weightless bone in the body, herstirrup bone, which was ground upand sown into the sea. I do not knowwhat a soul is, I think of itas the smallest, the core, civil right. And sheis wild now with it, she touches and istouched by no one knows — down, ordroppings of a common nighthawk,root of bird’s foot fern, antenna ofHairstreak or Echo Azure, or stepped on by thehuge translucent Jerusalem cricket. There wassomething deeply right aboutthe physical elements — atoms, and cells,and marrow — of my mother’s body,when I was young, and now her delicateinsignias receive the direct