Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 16,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.
Alison Luterman: At the Jeweler’s Tent
The little bandy-legged jeweler
with his wandering pale-blue eye
has just come back from Indonesia,
where he slept on the beach and bargained for fire opals.
He wants to sell me a slice of carnelian, set in silver,
warm as a rust-red autumn leaf.
“It frees self-expression; makes you magnetic.”
Gorgeous bullshit. But I sink my hands
up to the wrist in his tray,
where precious and semi-precious alike
are spilled like bright candies.
There’s the soft clink of amber against aquamarine,
lustrious glint of sky and flame
pick-axed out of deep earth. I can’t afford
anything here, I’m just rummaging,
embarrassed by this late-life
lust for shine. As if I could slap down a credit card
and buy back my youth,
or at least one last ruby sunset
to drape round my throat.
I hold a string of amethysts up to my collarbone.
There are wrinkles on my neck now,
rings of crinkled flesh like tree-markings,
one for each lived year. As for the rest, down below…
well, that’s the thing. And here is the heart
that wants the thing, the heart confounded
by what it can’t keep or let go–
insistent, persistent, flawed old heart,
yearning and pulsing, same as always.
Copyright 2020 Alison Luterman. From In the Time of Great Fires by Alison Luterman (Catamaran 2020).
Alison Luterman is a poet, essayist and playwright. She lives in Oakland, California.
Vox Populi 
“…flawed old heart….” I love the poem, and you proved me wrong. Perhaps poems about growing older are not excluded out of hand. Great!
LikeLike
LOVE❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Makes me want to go find my carnelian and amber, but then I’ve been isolated forever and if I do get out. Why would I call attention to that older me in the mirror?
LikeLiked by 1 person
HA! The mirror stopped flattering me years ago.
M. Michael Simms https://www.michaelsimms.info
Author of Nightjar Author of American Ash Founder of Autumn House Press Editor of Vox Populi
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
So fine a poem!
LikeLiked by 2 people
I agree! I love Alison’s poems. Michael Simms Publisher/Vox Populi Founder/Autumn House Press Author/Nightjar Author/American Ash
LikeLiked by 2 people