Mouth prickled by crumbs of flatbrod, I blurred glass with breath and desire staring at red clay shoes small as my toes - malaprops among silver in her corner cupboard. "They are all I have," she said, her English swinging in the hammock of Danish, "from the earth of my country." When the milk was warmed, a comfort for a child's sleep, she skimmed the skin off - a membrane fragile as the first tissue of ice on a road puddle, "The milkman left you his shirt." Though we were both island born she brought a grandchild little - language and land left behind: a pair of shoes cobbled from clay, the altered garment of an old saying, a voice adrift in a new tongue rocked in the swell of the old. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PASSER MORTUUS EST by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY PICTURE-SHOW by SIEGFRIED SASSOON AMORETTI: 15 by EDMUND SPENSER MIRACLE by LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY by JOHN KENDRICK BANGS SONNETS OF MANHOOD: 20. 'SONG IS NOT DEAD' by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) |