Riehlife Poem-of-the-Day: “Copper Bracelet,” by Laurie Wagner Buyer

Learn more about Laurie Wagner Buyer’s work at her two websites including Working Words Guide.

See her essay “Finding Poetry in Everyday Life” in the Artists & Writers category below. And the anthology “Come Back Wolves” in the announcement section. –JGR
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Copper Bracelet
by Laurie Wagner Buyer

Who bent these links one by one,

the smooth curves equal to the eye,

the way each one grasps another

as if to say hold on tightly?

Who gripped the tiny pliers to squint

into each ring as if to see

the mineral caught in rock released

by heat then poured in molten strand—

I find the jeweler hidden there

between the loops and spaces bent

beneath the grim task of making

something from nothing, the cold raw

metal substance made to measure

a wrist, the strength of centuries

woven into thin medicine—

yet how I let this trap my sense

of self, the silly notion that

I’m chained to something that I will

never know or see, the certainty

with which I’m bound to memory,

to sky, to soil, the sweating slave.