A Heart-Shaped Amulet
Gazing upon the houses and fields of my kingdom
I can see my grandmother outside a cottage –
around her neck a heart-shaped amulet.
Behind the oak door in back of my retina
that man whispering to me has a lot of good ideas.
The ten-second delay covers any mistakes.
Looking into the amulet I study my embryo –
Am I a bird or a dinosaur or a mustard seed?
Human or amphibian, everyone starts out a fish.
Glad to deliver all the truths anyone could want –
giving money to charity or planning diabolical heists.
A whiff of smoke leads me into the forest
to a fairy tale thatched roof cottage
rollicking with laughter, fiddles, and breaking glass.
There is no door, no way to get inside.
Through a steamed-up window I can just make out
the outline of an old man playing dice.
A Life in Full
I finally understand him. He used to take me for walks,
leaning on his cane, the one I now use. After he passed,
I helped go through his belongings. The way I see it,
there are two ways of looking at him. 1) He had a secret life,
slipping out at night to buy a pack of cigarettes but really
heading to a vaudeville stage and an adoring audience
to tap dance and tell dirty jokes and pull small animals
out of his hat. He might have said to me, “Hells bells,
will you sit around all your life?” 2) Another possibility,
which I’m hesitant to believe, is that his first wife
died of influenza and he turned to drink and gave up
his three small children and then lived on the streets
till he got sober and worked as a barber in a small town
with a new wife and daughter. My puzzle was solved
when I cleaned out grandfather’s closet. On the top shelf,
inside a fancy box, I found an elegant black top hat.
Jim Smith is retired, living in Silver Spring MD, and writing poetry. In 2024, he was honored to be named an “emerging poet” by the Mid-Atlantic Review. At long last, his debut collection, “The Boxwood Maze”, is now available from Finishing Line Press (and Amazon).
Featured image in this post is, “Old Onchan – Isle of Man” by Jon Wornham, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
