Millefiore
Grandpa Nathan’s paperweight
was a big old millefiore.
I coveted it
throughout childhood,
years before I knew
they could still be bought.
It was huge and heavy,
the glass flowers a concentric
honeycomb of colors
bedded in a crystal shpere.
When Grandpa died,
I was nineteen.
The next day I came down
with German Measles
and was spared
having to sit Shiva all week.
Instead, I read in bed,
all three volumes
of the Lord of the Rings.
I started giving my father
art-glass paperweights
so I could always find
something appropriate:
a speckled white orb
with markings like petroglyphs.
A tear-drop shape,
flashing iridescence.
A gleaming sand dollar,
fossilized to pyrite.
He always said, “I don’t need it,”
a line inherited
from Grandpa,
and it’s more or less true.
But of course it
misses the point.
– judith kerman