trinketry

Tres Charmente

Fortunate for you if when you were a child
your mother was building a charm bracelet;
My mother's sits on my desktop in all it's splendid trinketage,and each and every one of the twenty charms are
dulled-down Sterling Silver,

Coming into my consciousness at the same time
as the radio's Lone Ranger and Tonto's silver bullets,
As in: "Say, who was that masked man?"
"I don't know, but he left this silver bullet!"
It could have been some other silver amulet.

I count the charms, roll them in my fingers,
like beads on a rosary I turn them through my hand
and consider the significances of each,
a communion with a departed but omnipresent spirit
in each.

If I soaked this bracelet in polish it would come out
of the cleansing bath sparkling and renewed,
but I would thereby reduce some of the patina of
the many handlings these toys, these tokens have
lovingly received, or absently taken upon themselves
years by years;

Like Cracker-Jack prizes, but of a higher order,
collectable, perhaps the string might find its way into
a final resting place one day,
tools for a journey, like boats, or bowls, until resurrection.

[David Zep Dix 3-4-05
Two months before my heart surgery]

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