"Driving Glove" by Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson was born January 13, 1957. She has honors including Pulitzer Prize nominations and won it for Late Wife (2005).

Driving Glove
by Claudia Emerson
I was unloading groceries from the trunk
of what had been her car, when the glove floated
up from underneath the shifting junk-
a crippled umbrella, the jack, ragged
maps. I knew it was not one of yours,
this more delicate, soft, made from hide
of a kid or lamb.It still remembered
her hand, the creases where her fingers


had bent to hold the wheel, the turn
of her palm, smaller than mine. There was
nothing else to do but return it -
let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water
to rest on the bottom where I have not
forgotten it remains - persistent in its loss."

This short quaint poem of two stanzas changes the tone from a once distance memory about a lady to a full flood of the memory where as the speaker must take a moment to catch her breath. While unpacking groceries from the car, a driving glove comes up from "the shifting junk." It is at a point where the speaker is trying to remember back to a time when a woman was still alive. It is not "one of yours, thus more delicate, soft, made from the hide of a kid or lamb,” may refer to it that it is not her father’s glove, but maybe her mother’s. The break after the speaker describes the woman's hand shifts the tone. This drop off in the middle of the sentence suggests that the speaker has had the full memory of a tragedy that had happened, but is not described. The speaker needs to take a breath. A new heart reaching memory floods in and the tone shifts from a calm, melancholy tone into an emotional, mournful whirl. The mournful speaker does not want the memory to be lost. It is placed back where it is found, "return it-let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water to rest on the bottom." This memory will not be forgotten, even as the inference of the speaker leaving the car and glove behind to leave the woman's touch where it is remembered most.