'The Summer Argument'

The Big Dipper hangs above the horizon in late July and points north. The Little Dipper cups Polaris at its handle. These are the two constellations navigators learned first — the ones that tell you exactly where you are in every season they appear, the summer argument that the sky is not random, that abundance has a pattern, that if you learn to read it you never lose your bearings.

The valerian that grows in the summer meadow throws its flower clusters in July at exactly the height of the season — small white florets, each one a kind of star, arranged in compound umbels the old herbalists called all-heal. In this ring, they are stars. The summer sky, pressed into resin. The Big Dipper and the Little Dipper held in a green field. The argument the valerian makes is the same argument the summer sky makes: look more closely. The pattern is already there.

This ring is for the woman who can read the night sky in what everyone else thinks of as a garden.