Estate Sales

I'm still not quite sure where this came from, the actual estate sale that prompted the thought was nothing like this. I do know I was writing a lot of sonnet-shaped poems then, not rhymed or rhythmed like a sonnet but 14 lines, usually with a six line tail or coda. "Mock sonnets" then, or "mockets."

Source: Mark Cassino

Estate Sales

We wandered by accident into an estate sale --
as gruesome as stumbling over someone else's
dead grandmother. Her hair curlers, votive shrine
to Our Lady of the Pine Barrens. Like a toe kicking
decalcified ribs. Too easy, you think: no other
tale can come from this. Yet from a picture she calls --
a grey-toned processed wave says then it was like this --
don't forget she laughs.
                                      Glad grasshoper loudness
of the field, you see us in our misapprehensions,
leaping to conclusions but falling short, falling.
In her yard I picked up a smooth grey stone to hold
for nervous rubbing: when they come to buy
my unburdened things, I hope some child will ask
what is this for? who would keep a rock?

(Published in The Cape Rock, vol. 32 no.2, Fall 1997)