A handmade dress passed down
from your mother finds space
in the cedar chest at the foot
of the bed. The chest, a relic
of your father’s, bore a new
scratch from your daughter
and her tin cup, a totem
bought secondhand from a tinker
scraping by as best as tinkers can
these days. Your daughter took
a liking to the thing, showing early
signs of rust or at least a stain
of tomato soup from a hurried
washing, as if the tomato soup
would cleanse itself regardless
of the tinker’s careless hands,
his off-brand soap,
the hard water straight
from the tap. This water, hard
as it is, was the same water once
watering the now-cleared cedars
used to form that chinked chest,
the same woods where a woman
once lay in a new dress waiting
for the rain to come
and brown the white silk
Jacob Schepers’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Verse, PANK, The Fiddleback, and REAL, among others.
Photo by author
