Listen.
Be quiet.
Wear totems.
Walk in the woods
or anywhere else.
Take photographs.
Carry a notebook.
Keep a word box,
a tool box —
books, dictionaries,
paper, a favorite pen.
Carry a knife.
Open your hand.
Cut.
Ronnie Hess is a journalist whose work has appeared in national and regional newspapers and magazines. Her poetry has been featured in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Calendars; Cup of Poems and A Side of Prose; and is forthcoming from Wisconsin People and Ideas Magazine, Poetica, and Albatross. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.