Monday, June 01, 2009: On the Street…Print Dress, Sydney

Precipitation

You showed me your grandmother’s ring—
A poison ring, you called it—that could hold a capsule
Of cyanide in it. But your grandmother used it
To hold a seed pearl from the strand that snapped
On her honeymoon. She’d knelt on the blue carpet
Of the hotel in Cape Cod, praying it wasn’t an omen,
Plucking the ashen beads from the navy fiber,
Cupping them in her palm (against her lifeline)
like rainwater, miniature hail, fine snow.