"Matryoshka" from my first collection, Lines of Flight, is based on a true story. It is one of my most reprinted sonnets, appearing in 14 by 14, Sonnetto Poesia, Soundzine, Writings, and Better Than Starbucks.
Matryoshka
What made me buy the nested Russian doll
whose faded paint and fractured wooden frame
had doomed her to a yard sale? Had her fall
from grace inspired a longing to reclaim
for her, for fifty cents, some lost esteem?
Or would the curious plaything prove to be
a conversation piece? No, it would seem
I brought the pregnant outcast home for me.
For women I had tried so long to trace,
Matryoshka was a tangible motif;
same yet separate, I knew the face,
gave up each grievance, sanctioned every grief.
Restored, they stand here, echoing one another –
mother, daughter, mother, daughter, mother.
