A scale trued by memory ...

The photo prompt for this week's Magpie Tales is the beautiful 1 kg clunker shown here.

Never alone

never alone,

the dark iron weight bobbed up

and down on the bronze plate

in the company of river fairies,

arrowheads and lunar sails

no, señor kilo never danced alone

as he proclaimed his dense message,

the only thing we need to know about him:

I weigh exactly one kilogram

Abril would always surround him

with small river washed stones

she gathered every Sunday morning

after mass in the shady bend

of the stream behind the village church,

La Pedrera,

that sat in pious silence at the edge

of the meadow

the other pan brimmed with potatoes

and onions I would carry back home

happy to heed the daily commandment

“go see Abril and bring me one kilo of each”

with steady hands that always

smelled of moss from river rocks

Abril would hold up the scale

dangling from a jangling chain

and load my end

with the earth blessed offering

for that night’s tortilla

while señor kilo concentrated

on holding up and down

his end of the see-saw bargain

and then,

so I would know the deal was fair

that what’s right was right

and lighter than right

she would add a couple of river polished stones

to señor kilo

she may not be able to read or write,

she might be named for the

month of her birth and not for a saint

because her parents were not wed,

never were and never would be,

but the deal was oh so fair

as señor kilo and his sleek pebbles

locked anew into still balance

with my next meal

her eyes would lock on mine

and hold me gently in

her streaming mists

in a trembling voice that cooed

like a warm throated bird

warbling smooth water stories

gurgling her river song

she would tell me

one stone was the earring

dropped by a Xana nymph fairy

while she danced on the river

in the coming of spring

this one is a sail

made of June moon

that floated down to the church

to celebrate my communion

another was an arrowhead

flung by an ancient warrior

in September’s waning sun

and here is the eye of a star that

fell to earth when her constellation

was shaken by a winter wind

I remember meadow frozen drops of dew

I remember petrified tears

señor kilo now sits alone on the edge of my desk

holding down telephone bills and unopened envelopes

in awkward perfect balance with the computer

that loads down the other end

I now buy potatoes and onions from I know not where

I pick them out myself, wearing plastic gloves,

and weigh them on

perfectly calibrated digital scales

but when life

seems to tip off-kilter

I see señor kilo

under lightly prancing Xanas

dancing their naked ear lobes

under showers of arrows

shot by blind stars

and then my scales will

momentarily

lock into perfect balance

though they teeter

on an ever sharpening

spike

Photo of me, 3 years old, near my grandmother’s farm in Asturias, Spain, presumably looking for Xanas and arrowheads.

Do stay a while, take my hand and stroll with me, and then go see what other Magpie Tales participants have put on their scales by clicking here.

One year later (Feb 18, 2011), I am linking this post-poem to One Stop Poetry, where Peter Marshall has asked us to dig up old poems from or about our childhood or youth. To see Peter's own poem and what other participants at One Stop Poetry site have done for A Saturday Celeberation: Your Past, click here.