Linda Ruhle
2011 Wyoming Senior Poet Laureate

Linda Ruhle, 64, of Worland, raised her two sons in Los Angeles before moving to Wyoming in 1996. She is a fulltime administrative assistant whose published credits and awards include poetry, essays and short stories. Besides writing, gardening and photography, she loves nature, specifically rocks, bones, feathers, horses and cats. She has completed three books, numerous short stories and essays, and about seven hundred poems. She is a previous winner in SPL contests. Linda is a Gemini.

GLITTER

What will they think of next?
I can now have the cremated remains
of my dearly departed pressed
into a sparkling diamond to wear

around my neck, instead of locked
inside a tightly-closed silver pendant,
ashes free floating inside and bumping
up against my chin whenever I lean over.

Perhaps I could get the mantled urns
of my two ex-husbands pressed into a pair
of matching studs to glow from my earlobes
like two hot loving embers.

Why, when my third ex-husband dies, I can
have a matching diamond pendant sparkling
around my neck, and I'll try hard to forget
that desperate time he tried to strangle me.

Oh, just picture it! Chuck dazzling in one
lobe and Jack trying to outshine him
in the other, with George hanging near
those breasts he never liked to touch.

No more sorrow or inconvenient graveside
trips, just the delightful task of placing
glittering stones upon my body as I dress
for a date, or my own blind date with eternity.

Oh, you say you like my diamond studs
and wonder how I got them? Well, thanks,
but a lady never tells her age or just how
she acquired her beloved diamonds.