It’s gone. I let it fall into the trash.
It was not meant to live with jewels encased.
A builder’s tool it was, and should have been
for fastening the non-abstract of life:
the corners, benches, table-tops and shelves.
And yet on velvet-red it lay for years
as honored there as all the golden chains.
With silent sorrow was it given me
and laid so gently upon my hand.
He had searched his pockets too empty large
and found one dully satin silver wing nut—
to give in place of the awaited goodnight kiss,
an offering to say goodbye, “It’s over…”
For he had found a more completing love
although his love for me had never failed.
In memory of tears and soft regret,
for many silver velvet years, it lay
with spreading upward outward seeking arms
to catch the master’s hand as tightly sealing
he would turn it finishing off his work.
Till, time drifted, it lay in chalklike gray,
and sugar-powder dust, so softly sifted,
fell upon the velvet there.
But now at last I’ve let it fall away—
the love, the dream too long held fast,
let slip from my hand, my life, so swiftly final
the ghosted gray, once satin silver, fallen…
disremembered. But no, not yet—
an echo drifts in misting memory
still, of one love’s gentle dying light.
#LoveLost #LovePoetry #LoveandMemory #LoveTokens
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission:
SPLINTERS FOR FEBRUARY 2021
LOVE’S DYING LIGHT
It’s gone. I let it fall into the trash.
It was not meant to live with jewels encased.
A builder’s tool it was, and should have been
for fastening the non-abstract of life:
the corners, benches, table-tops and shelves.
And yet on velvet-red it lay for years
as honored there as all the golden chains.
With silent sorrow was it given me
and laid so gently upon my hand.
He had searched his pockets too empty large
and found one dully satin silver wing nut—
to give in place of the awaited goodnight kiss,
an offering to say goodbye, “It’s over…”
For he had found a more completing love
although his love for me had never failed.
In memory of tears and soft regret,
for many silver velvet years, it lay
with spreading upward outward seeking arms
to catch the master’s hand as tightly sealing
he would turn it finishing off his work.
Till, time drifted, it lay in chalklike gray,
and sugar-powder dust, so softly sifted,
fell upon the velvet there.
But now at last I’ve let it fall away—
the love, the dream too long held fast,
let slip from my hand, my life, so swiftly final
the ghosted gray, once satin silver, fallen…
disremembered. But no, not yet—
an echo drifts in misting memory
still, of one love’s gentle dying light.
#LoveLost #LovePoetry #LoveandMemory #LoveTokens
LOVE LETTER, A REMNANT
Since our last farewell
how I long for you!
Like the wind
and this winter coast
with its roaring waves,
my heart yearns toward the sea,
calls: Come back to me!
And when the summer
Returns with moon-sky
Bright with silver stars
I will wait for you
Where red roses bloom.
#LovePoetry #LoveLost
Spic and Span Again?
Having chucked out and packed up in January, is everything in your home now spic and span? This expression is not a coupling of two English words. They are both, as a pair, a remnant from the 16th century. When I looked at the origin of this expression, I thought at once it was odd for a cleansing product to choose this expression for its brand name.
The “span” portion works well enough, since it meant “new”. Something new is usually also clean. So far so good. However, the English word span is also a term for distance or something which covers a distance.
Even this sort of works. If you are talking about something that is fresh and clean, that something will have some surface. You can span a surface (go across) or measure the span of (distance across) a surface. So, the expanse of the something is clear of dirt, clean. However, that leaves “spic” unaccounted for.
But this “spic” is a variant of “spike” and is a reference to wood splinters, as in fresh wood shavings. It is not the slang prejudicial epithet used to insult people assumed to be of a certain nationality. That meaning would truly make a mess of this three-word expression.
Most people are familiar with places that cover their floors with sawdust—in circus tents, some restaurants, and bars, perhaps some agricultural buildings, too. But shavings? Are these not more likely to end up as tinder for a fire or mulch in the garden?
Perhaps homes with dirt floors used shavings as a floor covering. I know they used rushes, other herbs, and grasses for both their fragrance and as insulation. The used ones could be easily swept from the dirt floor and replaced. Thus, making the floor “fresh and clean” again, sort of. It is just as likely, that one layer was simply covered over with a newer, fresher layer.
Perhaps centuries ago, they might have used shavings as stuffing for mattresses. You could undo your soiled mattress, dump the shavings wherever, wash the cover and restuff with new shavings. Voila, fresh and clean mattress. But I doubt this is the association that led us to the interpretation of “fresh and clean”.
Perhaps, after all, it simply referred to the freshness of the cut wood and how cleanly the cut was that made the shaving. It might have been an industry-specific term that drifted into the homes of those workers and into the rest of our lives.
By the way, the language source is Norse with a flavoring of Dutch.
#EnglishLanguage #EnglishIdioms
Author’s Notes
GLASS RAIN—the poetry by Margaret Roxby
“LOVE LETTER, A REMNANT”. This selection was found in its original hastily scribbled version among the poet’s papers. It was then edited by this site’s content manager for release this month.
KALEIDOSCOPE—a series by Kathleen Roxby
“Spic and Span Again?.” This idiom attracted the author’s attention when she was a child and her grandmother often used it to describe her goal when cleaning up. The expression never seemed, to the author, to have anything to do with “clean”. When at last the cleanser of that name appeared in her house, she assumed that her grandmother took her cue from the cleanser, meaning that the house needed to be scrubbed clean. However, even that explanation never really satisfied her curiosity until she finally did the research resulting in this blog. Note: the product of this name was first introduced in 1933.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS—the poetry of Kathleen Roxby
“LOVE’S GENTLE DYING LIGHT” is the result of a poetry assignment to write in iambic pentameter about some unpoetic object. What is described is a true happening. Kathleen was in college, and the young man at the door was someone she knew from her Drama work. They had been at a party hosted by friends who lived just a block from her house. He offered to walk her home when, at one o’clock the amount of smoke in the party rooms proved too much for her. The events in the poem happened as written.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission:
SPLINTERS FOR FEBRUARY 2021
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission:
WINTER TREASURE
Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, moonstones,
All treasured stones of mankind
Seemed to dangle from twigs and leaves
As morning sunlight reflected the wealth.
Shafts of white, red, green then yellow
Splintered across the valley floor.
As this caught my eye, my body froze.
I could not move and miss one moment
Of this dazzling winter display.
My tongue silent, my heart leaping
Inscribed the memory
Forever in the data bank of my mind.
#WinterandPoetry #IceCicles #WinterMemory