The Whispered Sip of a Quiet Cup of Tea

I arrive at this age 

gray as an  

Amagansett beach 

late December sky

peering through the loupe

of a crinkly eye 

which allows me to 

magnify my flaws

and appraise my life.

While the pinky-ringed experts of

The Antiques Roadshow

would say that at auction 

I wouldn’t fetch much

the truth is that no longer matters

because I have become 

a family heirloom 

like the flint glass replicas

that Parisian high society once coveted

as did our daughters 

when they loved to play dress up

in nana’s night-out fascinator

uncertain heels

and 

mahogany velvet gown

that was topped off 

by the extravagant flourish

of her Victorian Amethyst Paste Rivière necklace 

with its Cadbury purple hue

which, now, 

all these years later, 

lie in the tomb

of a pale yellow dowry box

on a runner of rose-embroidered lace 

alongside the remains of

a Silver Paste bird brooch

and a pair of Art Deco earrings

which soon enough will be us,

sleeping diamonds 

wrapped in a duvet of dust,

who,

once in a blue mood,

triggered, perhaps,

by a scratchy recording 

of a Bach partita

or the sudden discovery 

of a pink scrapbooked rose

will be resurrected 

in the helium filled bubble 

of a fly-by daydream 

which

for one brief moment

will remind the beneficiary 

of that dispatch

wrapped in a favorite cardigan 

in between the whispered sip 

of a quiet cup of tea

how shiny 

we once were.