Looking at Handkerchiefs

This weeks Poet of the Week for the W3 poetry prompt is Michelle Ayon Navajas. Her prompt on David’s blog The Skeptic’s Kaddish is to take out your handkerchief. During the Renaissance period, a handkerchief was considered a powerful symbol of women. Giving this item to a woman meant true love, honesty, commitment, and righteousness. If by chance you don’t have a handkerchief, explore your creative side and imagine you are holding one right now. Write an ode to your handkerchief and make it sound like a love ode.

I call myself modern I’m not prone to weeping
Yet I hold hankies close to my heart for their safe keeping
The first is thin as tissue, lilac and pressed
Trifold clipped when to the nines my mom’s mother dressed
Still indented from the brooch that held it to her breast
The next has dainty needlework in each lacy corner
Dad’s mom tuck’d it in her sleeve like the one who borne her
Another is less fancy made of coarser cloth
It bears a tiny hole sign of damage from a moth
Great grandma’s – present when she pledged her troth
All these ladies hankies are precious in my mind
A history of my grandmas separate and yet combined
But the most valuable is not a pretty square
It is my father’s handkerchief a big cotton affair
When I remember him that handkerchief is there
Prone to nosebleeds he always carried two
Mother tried to keep them white but no matter what she’d do
They’d end up yellow with brown blotchy stains
Soaked and bleached even now every stain remains
When opened wide all hurts it could contain
It wiped noses, scraped knees and blood that was seeping
And now holding it with love, I’m once more weeping

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