Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

The Wooden Egg

192 gArnet poems The Wooden Egg I keep it on my writing desk to honor you, and somewhere you are writing about it, or rather, about the desire that ascended in you the day you sought it. In that town, nowhere decent to buy a gift, not if you walked across the tarmac of the parking lot into the glare-searing mall, not if you drove to that dust-thick card shop on the square. Yet your fingers stretched for this made-in-thePhilippines egg, hand-painted fans of palmettos and banyan leaves splayed across a deep maroon. I think you liked the heft and curl of it cupped in your hand. We stood on the threshold between two rooms, May’s brash noon light purling through windows green with trumpet vine, and beyond the screens, the rhythm of white clapboard lines. You proffered it shyly, I remember, and I did not gaze at you deeply enough to speak my full thanks, still, for the first time, I felt your love made tangible in such a silence as sweeps through snow. ...