Round Top in March

In the middle of fields of blue bonnets and
wilder flowers, tall, green grasses newly born,
a Frenchman, dealer in antiques, asks me:
Are you lucky?

Am I lucky? I repeat back hesitantly, as if again in language class. Yes, he says. Are you lucky?
I am his first customer, he says. He says she                found a dead rabbit
on his doorstep just this morning. Maybe I have             luck, he hopes.

Maybe, I say. I think so.

As I sign the receipt, I muse on the strange superstitions of other people in far away lands            that I can only
take home in pieces and it makes me feel
more confident about the purchase I have made.

But in the hours it takes to drive back home and
in the days that follow, roadside blue bonnets            fading from pure
blue to softer denim, weed sand wildflowers              overtaking them,
I think back to the dream of those
fields and the lovely old art sold there and I                wonder
how I was not more ready with an answer for the         dealer.

I think of a woven Turkish rug, bright
face I designed my room around but left
in Turkey for someone else to buy. How regret             retreated
below euphoria, wonder, when I found
the very rug at as mall American shop I
happened to walk into, threads of happiness               extending
through the tassels.
I think of the weeks, years that passed
before the stolen purse, the job, completely
Out of sight returned to view.

Of my son, for whom I bought the beautiful
antique French chest of drawers, who lives freely
       and wildly
despite his tragic birth, subsequent feeding                  intolerance
and chronic chylothorax,

all gone now, vanished like the tents and vendors
of the flea market, leaving me alone to think
how lucky I must be.