Vestige

I wanted to share a poem with you all that I wrote for the Clothesline Musings exhibit on display now at the Cary Arts Center. Hope you enjoy! Listen here: Vestige She slips an aged brooch into my palm and smiles.No words, but I can read the meaning in the crackles of skinaround her brown lips saying, take this, this artifact of my touch, this proof of love, string it in your archives like a light sheet of fabric.Touch it as it has touched me. I say “tell me"—about the times she wore it to family dinnersand funerals, across town to see the dearest of friendsor sickest of neighbors. Decades after decades after decades...I swear not to let each turn of the clock hand pass empty-handed.This time here—this effort it takes to sit presentlyin the other’s presence after the length of a day—Is rarer than hope’s diamond.She tells me how she made it through her battleshow she has managed to barter with God for yet another yearhow much she is thankful for and alllllll that she regrets.We pause.Wait for the heaviness to lift, wait to be unhungunhingedworn again. When my memory ageslike a leaning Sycamore losing branchesit may take longer to recall the echoes in your voiceor this golden brooch we have worn, handled,share.  Palm these stones and stories begin to speak—an oral history that has fallen out of commission,just some old show of hands to fall back to at the poor folks’when nothing that is “better” is working.But unlike the good ol’ days everything is subject to malfunction:a hacka blipan outage.Yet this ornament spans years; these hands, opening the latch,once looped shirts and Easter dresses between wooden pegsunder a kinder sun. And Isitting in your chairhang on:to the pursing of the lips bringing forth wordand the joining of our fingers on this physicality of space,artifact of love, evidence of time.