The Snow Globe Repairman
By Anne M. Doe Overstreet
gleam.
— Susan Kinsolving, author of The White Eyelash
10 • The Snow Globe Repairman
Crawford looks at his hands with their knuckles like tectonic
plates, cradling a seeping globe that encloses
the Pyramids of Giza. Like his wife’s breast
and the frayed head of the old retriever. So much
the same, how they fit within his palm. In a glass
cupola, vees of geese tilt north past New York City,
the Peace Arch and hula girls sway in a slurried snow.
They all come to him here; every dreamt destination,
every journey’s souvenir lies unwrapped, nested in
a newspaper from Poughkeepsie or brown parchment.
What a woman wants to preserve of the grotto at the Bay
of Conca Dei Marini rests in a tangle of pliers and glue,
tubes of glitter in gold, silver, and the occasional blue.
He knows something of purity’s formula, can mix up water
sweet enough not to cloud or green. He examines a curve
for imperfection, a flaw like a mar on a peach that needs
the tender knife. And although this particular day he enters
the workshop more slowly, and cups heat first in a fist
to limber up stiff joints, he recalls well enough
similar evenings when the light was going, when she waited
for him to finish. How her voice traveled across the field
as she called him home for dinner. They spoke of Paris
at the orchard gate. He stretches tendons for the delicate
work of repair, heaven’s dome fixed securely above.