Forgive my short walk to the corner store.
Late November, her birthday, forgive me
the same gift each year. Top notes of orange
and bergamot, base notes of musk and cedar—
forgive my intoxication.
Forgive the mystery its name held to a child,
its box round and dark as chocolate cake.
And the talc’s feathery puff—forgive the weightless
pink. Forgive the lake and ocean floors
where it was dug—translucent soapstone
coupled with asbestos ore. Forgive the
crystals, the cleavage—mica, silicate, the tiny
hexagons—forgive the pearly luster
that killed the men who breathed and boxed it.
Forgive the women who pressed their breasts
and hips and more against it. My mother—
soaking in her evening bath—was saved,
the whirl of children sent to town
for hamburgers. We could sit at the drugstore
counter, order again and again if we were still
hungry. Who could predict the evening’s charge—
positive or negative? Who could know
if the talc’s tiny atoms would stir or settle
her mood? Forgive the sand and ore that edged
her body every day. Forgive what washed
down the drain, silvered the street to the river,
rushed over the dam—forgive the roar of inky
water. Forgive what made it to the next town,
and the next, what made it tonight, to the great
lake where I live—white with winter’s dusting.
