There are thin gray cracks
in great-grandma's white serving bowl:
I have it by inheritance,
like the oil lamp from her parlor
and the particular cast of her eyes
I see in the old ambrotypes.
A few letters. Not much else left
from her eighty years. A lamp
without a parlor, a brief note
of thanks for a gift not mentioned.
And that piece of good china
she probably rarely used.
 
I keep looking for more. Maybe
something I've had all the while;
a few fine lines,
like the cracks that outlast the bowl.