Finally, after 47 years, I have found a civilized way to                                                   polish my silver.
                                        --Mrs. E. M. Sherman, (ad for Cape Cod Silver,
                                        New York Times)

Metallurgy: Symbol Ag
Ann Folwell Stanford

I can see why you are relieved, Mrs. Sherman. I was three
       when you began worrying about your silver. I believe I noticed my own
              creeping unease as well--a dark scrim obscuring the mirror beneath.

I imagined it moving stealthily on hands and knees, spreading across the surface,
       rooting at intervals, clinging with suckers and tendrils, shifting gradually across
              the surface of my world as I grew and worried and grew some more.

Bomb shelters, radiation leaks. And always communists. We crouched
       under little desks in Florida when the Cuban missile crisis came to town, certain
              they would soon bring godless bloodshed, totalitarian misery, to us all.

Experimental rockets exploded over Cape Canaveral’s coast,
       ripped the sky open, leaking liquid fire across the stars like a torn womb.
              Hurricanes whipped windows from houses, stole electricity from our lives.

Like mold, fear seemed to conquer most of life. And even worse,
       my mother’s silver. How to find a civilized way to fight and conquer
              the ugly, the brutal, (we might as well go ahead and say it) tarnish--

from teapot to serving tray, it spread across delicate scrolls and geometrics,
       sugar pot, cream pot, and even, God help us, to the cutlery, and maybe
              to the drawer itself (you never knew)--a suffocating, difficult dirt.

The maid fought back, dipped silver in water, rubbed smelly chemicals across every
       plane, inside each delicate whorl to conjure a temporary luster through the grime.
              And all the while cities were burning, busses boycotted, kings shot.

Alchemists called the metal Luna or Diana for the moon, but scientists know
       that sulfur and sulfides attack its shiny skin, as though to force it back to its
              origins: clumped, brown knots invisible under the earth’s great boot.

Mrs. Sherman, you’ve convinced me. It has a vanilla scent, you say? Send three.

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