The Doily
GARAGE SALE HERE!
We walked by all the dusty cars,
scanned the junk, too hot to touch
in August heat. Cracked clay pots,
heaps of clothes still wearing mud
from last year’s raining soccer game,
a row of votives, all half-burned,
wicks too small to light again.
I saw a crumpled doily there,
picked it up and asked some girl
tanning in a broken chair: “What’s the price?”
“10 cents,” she said. “Oh never mind,
just take it. I am sick of it.
My grandma’s grandma made it
umpteen years ago. It’s worthless
and it gathers dust.”
I pressed a $50 bill inside her palm.
She quickly stuffed it in her bra.
Her face grew pale, the color of fresh coconut,
as if she’d seen her first gray corpse.
Riding home, I started scratching
out a poem on backs of two deposit slips,
told my husband, “Skip the bumps;
I cannot join my syllables.”
I saw a woman sitting near a crackling fire,
a shawl around her shoulder blades,
hooking threads in perfect ropes,
the neat design of snowflakes
in a winter storm.
I guessed the fabric started white,
like hides on some albino horse.
It turned a shade of ivory,
then neutered stains
from tea that left a china cup,
missed the saucer, landed there
across the finely woven strings.
This doily stood for centuries
once here and not retrievable.