"translucent treasures, and sterling spoons..."

it is just another summer day
but it is our day to pretend we
are girls again, with nothing to
do but play.

we don't know where we will go,
but we leave anyway.
the road is full of promise and
each small town a gift to be opened
as we stroll old streets and
dust-covered shelves of antique shops
and empty used bookstores
talking of nothing...and everything,
or not at all...

we come through doors that ring
like sleigh bells when we enter
and then we part to explore fragile tea cups
and old quilts, first editions, and
small vignettes of embroidered handkerchiefs
and old sheet music,  yellow bread bowls
and sepia-toned photographs

but then one of us stumbles across a
wooden box of vintage silver spoons
a small cry of delight draws the other closer
in almost holy communion, like the kind arm
of an older sibling around the shoulders of
a younger child saying, I have found what we
were really looking for all along.

the tines of silver dessert forks,
spooning within the twisted sheets of a slender,
delicate slip of blue satin ribbon,
a handful of teaspoons that once stood erect in
heavy tavern mugs of coffee, a family...a place-setting
...of Rogers' sterling, refusing to be separated by time or
circumstance, estate sales or squabbling heirs.

we caress them, commenting on depth of bowl, intricacy of
pattern, balance of weight on the fulcrum of an exquisitely
designed handle...pure and satisfying as the word "good."

she will leave with a fine-boned tea cup and shallow saucer
kissed with rose buds and sweet william, 
a staffordshire stamp in gold leaf on the bottom...
a translucent treasure that settles in the hand
like a perfectly weighted bird,
a feathered creature that coos of summer
when winter rages outside the frost-painted window panes
of her cottage on the high plains
long after I am gone.

I will leave with a sisterhood of spoons engraved with the
name of a tavern in Maine. 
they will join a sorority of sterling sylphs i've gathered
into the spoon jar on my farmhouse kitchen counter.
and each time i select one, I will think of mountain days,
a river valley, and a friendship that stands the test of time...