COLLECTING VENETIAN GLASS

Because it is fragile,
because it is full of light,
because its gold threads
are nonnegotiable
except to the seeking eye,
because it is a basket
that holds only delight,
because its cup runs over
then shatters forever,
because we see ourselves in it.

 

In Venice, clever craftsmen wrought
these harbingers of human fate:
luminous,
friable,
mortal—
therefore I collect them.

 

These wine goblets and flower bowls
will self-destruct,
molten silica
becoming glittering dust.

 

Will my descendants puzzle over
these fragments of my life?
Will they wonder
what they held
when they were whole?

 

Broken glass can tell
as much as anything—
shards of pottery,
centaurs without legs,
Pegasus grounded wingless,
Aphrodite stripped
of her Archaic smile,
wearing only breasts, belly, sex.
Sappho’s lyrics scrawled
on ripped papyri—
these bits speak history’s
tattered tale.

 

How we cling to
scraps,
shards,
sea glass—
because we cannot stay.