To my son's love: about that broken goblet

by laurie koensgen

A mazel tov, really—

though I wasn’t there to toast

when you accidentally

broke

the glass

and crystal

shattered.

Neither of us

is Jewish. Let that go.

We can make

a secular proverb:

Until you’ve broken a dish in someone’s kitchen

you haven’t understood

what they’ve saved for what they savour.

Something opened

in the moment

the goblet

split.

May it not close.

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Laurie Koensgen is a poet and educator living in Ottawa, Canada. Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Juniper: A Poetry Journal, Barren Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, Black Bough Poetry, Burning House Press, Nightingale & Sparrow, Mookychick, The New Quarterly, The Madrigal, Literary Review of Canada and elsewhere in North America and the UK. Laurie is a founding member of the Ruby Tuesday Writing Group. Her latest chapbook, Blue Moon / Orange Begonias,is with Rose Garden Press.