How we organize the randomness.

Our legacies vanish not as footsteps in tidal sands or buried by volcanic dust or lava flows or lost in swirls of words loosed into the air but live revealed long after us in stories of how we organize the randomness.

RIVKAH BY RONALD TOBEY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 104

WEDGWOOD RENAISSANCE GOLD

At a suburban Philadelphia Presbyterian church

behind its cold stone façade

my bride enters hanging on her father’s arm

no pomp

but the solemnity of Elgar’s First Symphony

the bow of determined ritual plows the inertia of tradition

with the emotional joy

of Anne Boleyn’s walk to the chopping block

we choose our marriage’s first dinnerware and cutlery

with similar concentration and emotional lockdown

in department store luxury shops

platters and side dishes and teacups and saucers

sterling silver with maker’s mark

and fine jewelry prices

Wedgwood Renaissance Gold bone china

aspirational dinnerware for the academic middle class

as we live a ragged and meagre style

proof in the parking lot behind the apartment

a …