Indian Beads            

by Timothy Reed

She said her uncle told her of these things,

He called them ‘something’ beads, she thought.

He searched for them after the rains in spring,

And found them in some beautiful spot.

She couldn’t quite remember what he said,

But she’s been searching for them her whole life, 

In fields and forests, or any pretty place,

And she wondered if she’d ever find them.

She spun this tale as we walked along a stream bank,

Then one by one we jumped down into a bed of rocks,

A cushy bed, smoothed and stacked by the rushing water,

And at that moment I felt an ancient happy precognition.

Glistening in the stones was what looked to be a fairy’s ring.

I snatched it up, like an eagle seizes a fish out of the water,

And held it before our eyes, and said, “like this?”

She said, “that’s it, that’s what he was talking about.

I can’t believe you found one, just like that!”

“And now I remember, he called them Indian beads.”

He said they were ancient creatures from the sea,

The sea that used to be where we are standing

Three to five hundred million years ago.

We looked in awe at this little five-pointed star,

Just a slice of what was once a plantlike animal,

Who lived in a vast meadow of warm, shallow seas,

Long before the Indians, long before the dinosaurs.

And we felt both important and insignificant.