Shards

The red flower centered
between exotic curled lines
evokes the smell of old Jaipur,
the Hawa Mahal ~ Palace of the Winds,
where the maharaja’s women once peered
from pink honeycombed windows above streets
overflowing with painted elephants, camels, turbaned men.
A river of color, movement and sound,
from red-dust shrouded sunrise
to ember scorch at the horizon line;
the desert broken only by the organic rise
of dung and mud bricked houses sheltered
by one denuded tree, a mirage of shade.

A cobalt hurricane spiral or vine’s end,
worn too small to ever tell its origins,
its story, the shelf on which it sat.
A fragile immigrant perhaps, hand-carried
from the old country by someone’s mother’s mother.
Whole and admired for a century before
its demise, told with regret-laden mouths,
mother to daughter, daughter to mother,
Oh, I wish we still had that blue bowl, do you
remember? Great grandmother dropped it
when she heard about Johnny.
A circle of memory, come to rest
on this distant curve of beach.

The cream and blue striped shard
could be my grandmother’s coffee cup.
Rimmed brown and lipstick stamped,
sip, then drag on the Benson & Hedges
always attached to her electric-tipped fingers.
The cup was most likely broken in the war
that raged until death parted my grandparents.
Maybe it sailed harmlessly past my grandfather’s shiny
head and hit a rock near the creek, exploding into pieces;
a small token of their fragmented marriage
imbued with a lifetime of regrets, carried to the sea.
Grievance-scrubbed, muted by the journey,
this fragment must be handled with care.

You remember how you focus when searching
for the perfect frosted chip of glass, a glazed
sliver tangled in the eelgrass at your feet?
I found the largest piece this way,
delivered on a tide of need, at the ebb
of an unexpected storm;
a perfect cross, soft edges raised
on a rough slab of terra cotta.
The sun had warmed the worn shape
that nested in my palm like a missing piece,
as my restless fingers traced
down and across, across and down;

asking questions, seeking answers.