Love Beads

Grandma wore bright plastic to town on Friday nights,
Poppy beads, she called them
I could pull them apart with little fingers,
Snap them in, and out, with ease.
Unbreakable, those beads.

Later I passed hippie beads from neck to neck
as we chanted peace and love to one another,
and hung them in streams in doorways,
clicking open as we walked through
and showered back down.

Now I wear two bracelets.
On one wrist, hard pink plastic,
held together with elastic
etched with symbols of romance.
It stretches and adapts.

And on the other, my husband's pearls.
Silk thread weaves through the golden clasp
Elegant against the creamy luster
To work, it must turn all the way around
before it slips in smoothly with a click,

The silk knots around each pearl
Have grown old and I'm not careful.
It weakens with age and breaks.
The pearls drop, bounce and scatter.

Together we look for them, and count,
some have rolled beneath the sofa.
Some clear across the room.
We retrieve what we can find.
Don't worry, he tells me.
They can be restrung.