Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues - Posts Tagged "diamonds-and-rubies"

Diamonds and Rubies

Los Angeles, 1960.
Agapanthus and jacaranda.
Sam Raskin met Max Rosby
at their granddaughter’s garden wedding.
They sat on folding wooden chairs
in their best old suits.
Sam’s pants were a little tight in the belly,
and Max’s jacket a little loose in the shoulders.
Sam told Max
he’d changed his name
from Rassin to Raskin
when he got tired of being called
“Russian” and “Raisin.”
Max told Sam
“Rosby” worked out better for him in retail
than “Rosba.”
Sam knew of some Rosbas in Latvia.
As a boy, he told Max,
he once floated down the river
with his father and the logs
from Byelorus all the way
to the Riga lumber mill
owned by the Rosba family.
The lady of the great house
offered him a glass of water.
He stood at the doorway,
not coming in with his muddy feet,
peering inside at a home grander
than any he had ever seen.
Heavy oak and mahogany chests.
Dark red velvet runners on the stairs.
Leather-bound books in shelves up to the ceilings.
A chandelier dripping diamonds large as chestnuts.
The lady wore black satin,
and when she bent to hand him the glass,
he saw hung around her neck
a heart all of rubies.

Max looked down
at his legs stretched long
on the manicured grass.
His still-broad shoulders
sloped in his jacket.
“That was my mother,”
he said softly.
“She wore a garnet heart
that came from Prague.
The chandelier was crystal.”
“Well,” smiled Sam, shrugging,
hitching up his waistband a little.
“It’ll always be diamonds
and rubies
to me.”

Jan Steckel, 2005
First appeared in the online journal New Works Review, April-June, 2006