Legacy
by Karen Warinsky
We have the Pompei dog,
DaVinci’s paintings,
Shakespeare’s gloves,
the 32 plays, the 154 sonnets.
We have world-wide ruins where people
baked bread, told tales,
fought and loved
their children and friends.
Feudal swords hang on walls in Japan,
the hands that wielded them
rested into dust.
Eyes in ancient mid-eastern mosaics still
look out on scenes where people
once passed; thousands of vanished people.
And we have grandma’s cut glass sugar bowl,
her leather bound Rubaiyat,
her lace scarf legacy,
her lessons of love.
Karen Warinsky was a semi-finalist in the 2011 Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her work can be seen on several online sites, and she recently published two poems in Joy, Interrupted, an anthology on motherhood and loss, available through Amazon.com. She has lived in Illinois, North Dakota, Washington state, Japan and Connecticut. Mrs. Warinsky holds an M.A. from Fitchburg State University and currently teaches English at a high school in Massachusetts.