Handbag

(Botanical print of the fragrant herb rosemary:
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”
~ Ophelia in Hamlet, IV, v)

We’ve spent the month of June with storge, the first of the four loves that C. S. Lewis examines. Storge means family affection, so we have featured poems about mothers and fathers and children.

We end June with a look at what memories are made of. Or, as Dean Martin sang in his hit song, “Sweet, sweet memories you gave me.”

HANDBAG

My mother’s old handbag,
crowded with letters she carried
all through the war. The smell
of my mother’s handbag: mints
and lipstick and Coty powder.
The look of those letters, softened
and worn at the edges, opened,
read, and refolded so often.
Letters from my father. Odor
of leather and powder, which
ever since then has meant womanliness,
and love, and anguish, and war.

~ Ruth Fainlight, born 1931, American poet