The Necklace

Open link night at dVerse tonight. You can submit any one poem of your choice. Come join us. Bjorn is tending the pub all the way over in Sweden!  He has a special guest today – Sean Michael – a prisoner in the California penal system who frequently posts on dVerse.  Open Link Night #178 – Saving Grace

The Necklace
After you left I kept thinking you would return.
And because you so loved the small beauties
and the simple things, I kept the memories.
I wanted to embed them in molten glass
and string them on a fine gold chain
that you could wear under your clothes
close to your heart,
to pull the chain up and look at those simple things
and see them through my eyes that saw them without you:
the way the mist lay close to the ground
in the late autumn,
or the sound of birds the morning of the first snow.
The tiny new kittens boneless and blind
opening their pink mouths and silently hissing.
The last string of geese flying south
in the apricot dawn,
the velvet eyes of the young heifer in my friend’s barn
and the warm smell of the animals and hay,
the first tiny pink cherry blossom opening slowly
in the cold of early spring
or the ever spreading ripples in the koi pond
made by slow rain.
you never returned.
and the necklace of memories sleeps
in a small wooden box
never touched by your hand or seen by your eyes.