Browning

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