My grandparents' walls are covered with clocks,
and the memoirs of their ship: Invictus,
reads the anchor on the coffee table.
They sailed around the world before I was
born, and the map in the den documents, in
thumbtacks and colored threads,
where they've been.
At the age of five, not yet in love with
the Chesapeake Bay, I put my ear to the
conch shell and poked at their collected
trinkets in the sun-flooded front room.
The Patuxent River flickers at dawn;
at thirteen, I admired the trinkets
again. A burnished statuette, I imagine,
is from Spain; a typically charming shop
left over from centuries ago, fragrances of
the Old World seeping out into the paved,
rumbling streets of Madrid.
The woman at the register, grey hair
and wrinkles, a well-worn Castilian smile
drawing the sun-blinded tourists into the
dark room, flecks of Aztec gold glinting
in the dust, left over from the last voyage.
