Melanie Houle



INHERITANCE           

All I can know of you rests in my hand,
An emblem of uncertain legacy,
As cryptic as a footprint in the sand.

I have no explanation to demand,
Since no one still alive can answer me.
All I can know of you rests in my hand.

An eighteen-carat rose-gold wedding band
Is all that's left to tell your history,
As cryptic as a footprint in the sand.

Were you a farmer's wife, wed to the land,
A shopkeeper, a lover of the sea?
All I can know of you rests in my hand.

A worn inscription in a foreign hand
Encodes a message meaningless to me,
As cryptic as a footprint in the sand.

Our link, forged in the generations spanned,
is cast in gold that seals its secrecy.
All I can know of you rests in my hand,
As cryptic as a footprint in the sand.





Melanie Houle is a physician and former jeweler.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and The Raintown Review's first featured poet .  Her poetry also appears in The Lyric, California Quarterly, The Aurorean, Mobius, The Barefoot  Muse, The HyperTexts, ShatterColors, Contemporary  Rhyme, Journal of the American Medical Association, and others. 








                                    

 

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