A blood-red garnet, gilded filigree;
My Nana sent the necklace next-day air,
The day after she died it came to me.

Mere costume stuff, no value I could see,
Bent clasp and broken chain beyond repair,
A blood-red garnet, gilded filigree.

A note from her last nurse supplied the key
To open up the keepsake’s when and where;
The day after she died it came to me.

It made the journey, inexplicably,
From Lodz to Bergen-Belsen to Bel-Air,
A blood-red garnet, gilded filigree.

A common bauble prized uncommonly:
Not gem but journey rendered it so rare—
The day after she died it came to me.

I grasp it now, this broken, worn debris,
And know of whom, not what, I am the heir.
A blood-red garnet, gilded filigree;
The day after she died it came to me.

Thomas Schmidt is a retired professor with recent poetry publications in twenty-plus journals, plus his first chapbook published in 2020.