My daughter plays with the crystal box
in the shape of a heart
that my grandmother gave
me many years ago.
And in one brief
homage to gravity, it
is broken. I would rather
hold my girl than the box,
and I do. Still, I can’t help
but look at the empty space on the shelf
where the heart once was
and feel a little pull.
I remember when I was a girl
who played with her mother’s
green crystal dish and dropped
it on the kitchen floor
where it shattered into a hundred
green bits. Oh, how my mother
cried. And I tried to make her
a replacement one with salt-dough
I dyed green. I could not understand
why, no matter how I shaped it,
I could not make the dough look clear,
could not fashion it into crystal
no matter how I kneaded or pinched.
Out the window, the sunflower
leaves are flagging. I’ve deadheaded
all the blooms. And there’s more
space between the limbs
of the cottonwood trees
than there was just yesterday.
More sky comes through
through the emptiness.
I let my eyes rest there.
I do like the narrative quality here, so smoothly moving between the present daughter incident and the past daughter, but that look away from the both incidents in the closing third of the poem is really really nice, especially with that final line in place to seamlessly tie them all together.
Thanks David, you know, looking out the window seems to be one of the very best medicines in the world. Hugs to you r
From: “comment-reply@wordpress.com” Reply-To: Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 at 7:37 PM To: Rosemerry Trommer Subject: [A Hundred Falling Veils] Comment: “Bouquet of Small Losses”
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