Lace
A bit of lace, wind-blown, lands on your shoe—
A curtain torn somehow? A trace of craft?
It feels orphaned by someone you once knew.
It belongs pressed in a grandmother’s book,
not on pavement like an abandoned fact.
You pluck it. Pocket it and think you might
spot someone glancing out a cracked window,
who feels this relic is missing, whose sigh
you don’t hear but sense. The way you know
your grandmother passed, or an overdue book
wants to be returned, or that it won’t snow.
The gossamer weight in your left pocket
almost makes you list to port, an anchor
of hope missed. You didn’t want to spot it,
to recall your grandmother, her scrapbook
of departures. You taste her stale rancor.
She stayed sad as lost lace most of her life,
you think as you start to walk, looking
back for a bus. She hated being a wife,
mother, grandmother, not writing her book.
You tripped on lace, and miss her cooking.
Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something to Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A novel that includes some poetry, A Book of Lost Songs, is due out next spring. He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco where he points out pretty things.