SAUCERS
Elisavietta Ritchie
All that is left
of my mother's set
of pottery, white
rimmed with sky-blue,
are the saucers.
I use them under
clay pots of chives,
oregano, dill,
an impatiens.
My mother had
already smashed
the plates and cups
(alcoholic nights,
mornings shaky).
Summers, plants go
back in the garden,
leaving the saucers
muddy, stained, unfit
even to store.
But I remember
my mother, and scrub,
soak hours in bleach,
then slide them
under iced tea,
in autumn under
the pots again,
year after year
till they also break.
Now, like old black women
in South Carolina
who place broken plates
on family graves,
I arrange blue-and-white
saucer shards around
the perimeter of her own.
