Lost Gloves
Linda Eve Diamond, Port Orange, FL
The glamorous mannequin, vintage-dressed to the nines
gazes through her pretty veil with painted eyes.
See her and you might almost
glimpse behind her gaze a ghost...
wondering where all the wild hats have blown...
where so many feathery flourishes have flown...
smiling with quiet indulgence at the styles of our time...
so unlike her starlit nights when people "dressed" to dine...
recalling the special touch of dress gloves on her fingers...
(a small memory, nothing really, but somehow it lingers)...
but her gloves floated off, with so many little things, on scattered days...
old-fashioned salutations, certain social graces and gentle ways...
moving through vast, sparkling oceans of time...
in the hazy wake of elegant waves, with a faintly haloed shine...
not that everything was good, by far, or even that all good things must stay...
but imagine, for a moment, as countless more sweet somethings float away...
that once upon a time there was a day before anyone wore
jeans to the theater, or pajamas to the store...
...now, sleepwear shows up anywhere, or so it seems,
in downtown stores and cafes, as if our collective dreams...
...have moved to a bustling city
that never wakes...
