Judith Quaempts

After Her Death I took a dish towel she used to fold in careful thirds to fit a kitchen drawer. She reminded me then of a Buddhist monk or Carmelite nun, turning a simple task into prayer. I took a copper-bottomed saucepan she used for over sixty years, polishing the copper after every use, keeping it bright as her hopes for us. I took a blue glass bird with a broken beak that she kept because it was her mother’s. The saucepan I use often, though the copper lacks the brightness it once held. The blue glass bird sits on a windowsill. The dish towel I don’t use at all except to hold, to fold in careful thirds. Judith Kelly Quaempts lives and writes in rural eastern Oregon. Her work appear online and in print.