Field guide No. 1222
The long way home
One foot, one trip.
A single bare footprint is pressed into pale rippled sand, toes sharp and the arch deeply shadowed. Whoever made it has not come back by the same route.
Field noteOne bare footprint, crisp, no companions. Every part of it is ordinary; only the lack of a second step is odd.
Also possible, also breaking nothing
Sunlit burrows beneath red clayBurrows riddle a red clay bank so thoroughly that clear sky and clouds show through every tunnel.
The missing guestTables can be built round a gap. Laying for whoever made it is etiquette, not metaphysics.
The mitten’s hidden summerA mitten can lie in wildflowers under a night sky. The flowers are not a date.
Red ball through timeRed balls roll across a gym floor, each leaving a cracked mark behind. The game has kept the earlier moves.