Had to Consult the Dictionary on This One

Duff

Under the deep needle thatch
more needles, and under those,
shanks of needles and darkly thinning hunks,
the ghost bones of had-been needles.
A slurry of carapace and pupal shale,
a billion desiccate curds, pellet and turd
and the vast imponderable leavings
I love to scratch through, a kind of sub-continent,
a wilderness domesticated by rot,
in which, every now and then, I unearth
and turn up once again to the sun
some thing that my eyes might cherish
more than the suckling mouths of microbes do--
this delicate white arch, for instance, the mandible of a vole;
this mummified pin feather shank, its boutonniere
of down like the gray wiry hair in god's ear;
or strangest of all, this odd isosceles triangle
made of interlocked paper clips and rust.
I dangle it on an autumn bare syringa twig
where a junco might find it and by any bird's standards
build with it a superior nest.

-Robert Wrigley (Published in Orion, Jan/Feb 2009)