Geoffrey Winch
Legacy
The lustred blue bowl had pride of place on the Edwardian round table in the front room of our family home. Although it had been a wedding present to my parents, I always thought of it as belonging to all of us: my parents, two older brothers and me. I was very young when our lovely black and white cat knocked it onto the floor, shattering it into a hundred or more fragments.
A few days later it seemed as if a miracle had occurred: the bowl reappeared on the table looking exactly as it had before. There was an explanation of course: my father, being a perfectionist, had glued it back together. He’d done so in the evenings when I was in bed asleep—but how he ever managed to join so many irregularly-shaped pieces with such precision always remained a marvel to me.
After he passed away my brothers and I went our separate ways. I believe the blue bowl never meant so much to them as it did to me, for now it is in the safe hands of my daughter: an heirloom reminding her of her grandfather’s great dexterity.
potpourri first the aromas then the colours of autumn
About the Author
Geoffrey Winch, a retired highway engineer, writes free-form poetry; haiku; haibun; tanka; tanka prose; and cherita. He is the author of five poetry collections and lives on the south coast of England.