«We found it slipped
between the sheets», she said

as she handed me my
mother's engagement ring.

It had never left her finger
since her sailor beau had proposed

seventy seven years ago,
kissing her tide of red hair -

and I took the delicate band,
whittled thin with seventy years

of widowhood, and carried her
grief out into the rain.

by Denise BENNETT, in "POETRY NEWS", the newsletter of The Poetry Society, Spring 2014

(1st edition, 2014; 2nd edition, 2016)