Rusty Old Chain

While hiking in the woods.
I found a tired old shack.
It was hidden, covered with weeds.
I found an opening in the back.

While on my hands and knees,
I saw it lying on the floor.
Was covered with dust and webs,
under a rickety chest of drawers.

A chain of flaking rusty metal. 
Colored a crude muddy brown.
Probably worth nothing to anyone,
nor to any shop downtown.

A beaten wooden frame on the wall, 
the picture inside, faded and smelled.
A young girl, clothes ragged and torn.
Around her neck, the chain I now held.

Inside the chest of drawers,
was a fragile moth-eaten book.
It was a diary by the young girl, 
in the picture she so proudly took.

He was poor and toiled hard.
Her father worked the land.
The rusty old chain, a gift from him.
To her, it was regal and grand.

She cherished that old chain.
She wore it smiling with pride.
Since, as a child, she received it,
until old age, on the day she died.

Her family never got it.
They could never understand.
They removed the chain from her,
for it was not regal and grande.

The metal worth nothing,
she wore it from young till old.
To her, the contents of its cheap ore,
was worth more than any gold.

 

R. S. Morris

Reviews

[Paul Bell]

Great write. I suppose you summed it up. Her family never got it. Why would she keep a rusty old chain?
But millions of people keep those same old keepsakes, and they'll all say the same thing. It's the message conveyed, tangible to the touch.