doughnuts and plastic flowers

a large white doily hand-crafted by a tiny lady of eighty
covers the scratches in the finish of the large maple table in the
dining room
and hides the confectionary sugar from the doughnuts that
the little boy was eating when he knocked over the cheap green glass
vase
filled with four faded plastic roses
given to a young mother on the Dutchess county fairground
on july 28th 1953
by a sweet young man with a perfect smile and ice blue eyes
reminiscent of her grandson's which look now
so longingly to know him
instead of the flowers
and the granite stone that bears his name.