Word Basket By Rita S. Spalding

I have a word basket where I save delicate thoughts.

Silver braided with a ribbon down the center, 

between beginnings and endings that were or were not.

Sometimes tied and tangled, at other times turned 

and angled into a wide bow. It is a little bit of Jerusalem today.

Beneath the shades of wistful grays, there is a pallid lightness

in my loss of words to comfort, holding my throat in all its weakness.

We smiled and said goodbye years ago, not knowing

it would be our first and last and only wrinkle in time.

It would be our silver ribbon curling at the edges.

Now there is a gathering of goddesses who sort through life’s pages.

We are peaking at left over love letters never meant to be seen.

Papers you wrote in pencil, unfinished sentences that are lost forever.

None of it matters any more. We find the remains of your colorful shirts 

and hold them high above our heads; they make us smile.

We wonder, where did you wear the embroidered purple one?

Did the feathered straw hat perch above its collar?

Your brown leather jacket wears creases on each side and sleeve.

We wonder, what are the memories buried in its folds?

Did the wind hush them in soft whispers?

Your heart led to other worlds, other places, across oceans.

We could not follow you there and dared not try.

I smelled the bottle of unopened bourbon hidden in your boot, 

the drink you carried followed in your journey,

and now rests in my hands.

This is my word basket, where braided silver hides.

I cry, shout, and wonder why, oh why, oh why.

Now here today, here today, oh here today, 

all of my wonderings belong to Jerusalem.

Rita S. Spalding studied in London and graduated summa cum laude from Murray State University in December 2024. She is recipient of the 2025 Murray State Outstanding Senior in Sociology Award. She has been published in 18 Calliope anthologies, National Library of Poetry, AX-POW Magazine, The Heartland Review, Kentucky Monthly Magazine, Keeping the Flame Alive, Fallen, Rebirth, The Rye Whiskey Review, Walden’s Poetry and Reviews, Poet-Tree Magazine and Kentucky Humanities. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons, was published in 1992 and her two most recent books, published in 2025, are What is Beauty, and The Eighth.

Rita was formerly director of Women Who Write, where in 2006 she helped to establish the annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival, and had the pleasure of meeting writer and activist bell hooks. She also served as panelist for the Dorothy Clay Norton Fellowships at the Mary Anderson Center, and was on the committee to nominate Maureen Morehead as the 2011-12 Kentucky poet laureate.