You'd have thought her diamond was set in my flesh it cost me so much to sell it. They had me look at it through the loupe to see how the facets had been chipped by the marriage it foreshadowed. But I could not wear the purchase of her domestication for which she bartered small prairie towns, clutches of clapboard adrift on the green swell of wheat, shabby hotels which creaked room to room of harrow and hosiery salesmen, as she worked out the pitch for the next Farmers' Association selling Chautauqua lectures across the plain. I push her diamond across the jeweler's glass counter exchange her bribe for an amethyst to wear on my wedding bone to wear on the hand that bears the age spot on the vein exactly where it was on hers - her gift to me as sure as the black spot Blind Pew gave Bill in @3Treasure Island@1. My stone lays its bruise of color on my hand as I smooth maps across the dining-room table choosing my route, a punctuation of prairie towns - Wahpeton - Mandan - Medora - to vanishing point. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JACOBITE'S TOAST (TO AN OFFICER IN THE ARMY) by JOHN BYROM THE LONELY DEATH by ADELAIDE CRAPSEY TO MY NOSE by ALFRED HENRY FORRESTER MAUDE CLARE by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE BALLAD OF CHICKAMAUGA [SEPTEMBER 19-20, 1863] by JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON THE HOSTESS' DAUGHTER by JOHANN LUDWIG UHLAND WELCOME, LITTLE STRANGER (BY A DISPLACED THREE-YEAR-OLD) by CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS |