Relics
Forty years' passage is blurred
in spiraling sage, a trio of jade
elephants on paisley, drums
and sitar's undulation that fills
her like a hope chest.
A giant soap bubble rainbows,
rises, encompasses. The woman's
dowry of lyrics carried from hilltop
to hilltop mothers light intruding
on shadows to wrest her away
from regrets.
She smoothes Vaseline on chapped
lips, tongues the texture, strokes
two lap cats curled in Yin and Yang
and smiles at a third whose tail drapes
in a coma over the speaker.
She's taken back to a red turtleneck
worn while pushing a stroller up
and down Broadway in Oakland,
taken back to Esmeralda Loved
the Moonlight, yellow Tonka trucks,
Boogie Boards, terrariums and bunk
beds patterned with cowboys and Indians.
It's as though she clapped her hands
at twenty and whisssh, was transformed
to sixty, where elephants, paisley, Ravi
and sage still season the room, connect
the years, survive the ragged journey.
Marilyn Injeyan
December 7, 2002
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