At the Hope, NJ, Christmas Fair,

along the wall at the back of the gym,

behind a velveteen-draped table displaying

twig-antlered ornaments and holly-print potholders, sat

a plump little woman in an oh-by-gosh-by-golly green sweater

with regimental snowflakes marching around her midriff. 

She must have been sixty, perhaps older—near my age.

 

As soon as I broke the rim of sight, the eyes behind the thick-lensed glasses

caught mine, like a heat-seeking missile,

prompting the nod preceding polite questions,

touching and examining—all the preliminaries

to compliments in lieu of cash before the meandering holiday shopper moves on.

She had me figured out and stayed seated,

as if daring me to buy something.

They were about to drive me off, those defiant eyes,

and then I saw the flat open box of wooden pens.

 

There weren’t many—less than a dozen, sleek as icons,

nestled in gray plush and surrounded by recesses—

empty niches in a vandalized church

where statues of saints once offered intercession.

 

No two were alike—rosewood, ash, maple, oak-burl, some with laminated stripes

of ivory from a world before elephants began migrating over the horizon of extinction.

This one was made from a Martin guitar no longer playable, she told me,

and this yellow one—what was the name of that exotic wood?  She couldn’t remember.

 

“My husband made them, on his lathe,” she said. “He died last June.”

 

A good story to sell pens with. I bought two.

 

As she took my money I asked his name, since I’d be living with them now

and making them speak.  “William E. Hamilton,” she said.

I wanted to ask, was she was selling them all?

Wouldn’t she keep even one to remember him by?

But her eyes replied before I could ask.

“I remember him too well, and when the day comes that I don’t,

what’ll be the point of keeping these?”

 

​

First Meditation

 

Making it speak:

they knew how to use a lathe.

Their chisels gleamed from pegboard walls.

they swept up at the end of each day.

They saw the guitar hidden deep in the tree

and the grain in the broken guitar.

The dummy’s there to distract you

from the other pair of lips

that doesn’t move.

 

 

Second Meditation

 

If few are fit, it’s mostly those

close enough to touch,

and make suffer.

Relent.

Or stay in the basement

after supper is cold,

building birdhouses

for others to disperse

and forget.