Emerald
Lyn Lifshin
color those raven haired beauties
wore on the red carpet last night.
It was, like so much else, the
stone my mother always wanted,
the jewel for May, color of some
thing growing and new, a birth,
unlike hers, being the first but a
girl, hardly a celebration. This
aliveness from the grey of bare
trees. That birth, reported days
later. My mother wanted that
green color of leaves breaking
into life. This glitter, finally, breath
taking as Cleopatra's emerald
mines in Egypt. If only she hadn't
called me hour after hour she could
have bought herself a beauty. A
friend today wrote me "if you
want a jewel and can, buy it for
yourself." With a tiny diamond from
the man she eloped with, no emerald,
no special other stone, she tried to
smile at a pale flawed green ring
her brothers bought. Not a good one
she knew, never a symbol of faith
and immortality. I hardly remember
her wearing it. Maybe, as the myth goes,
if she gazed at it it would have helped
her eyes. But she saw only its flaws.
Or maybe she actually saw the
subtle change emeralds sometimes
displayed that some believe verified
the unfaithful lover, or the love
she still believed her brothers had for
her and didn't want to look ahead