wife

December 4, 2022

ASKING

Asking saints to intercede
is something quite new to me,
having never considered that saints
were people whom I might seek out.

I’ve started carefully, only
seeking saints who hang
on my family tree, Margaret,
Itta, Begga, Adela, Arnulf,

and I’ve vowed to ask nothing
for myself, for karma will
see to me one way or another,
so I ask only for those in need.

I don’t know if the saints
will respond, or how I would
know if they did, but my wife says
that prayer never hurts,

and I cannot argue with that.

October 15, 2022

STET-US QUO

The mind can be
a brutal editor, revising
history, rejecting memories
without a substantial rewrite.

My step sister, many years
dead remains five, that
young face engrafted
on the woman ravaged
by unrelenting cancers.

My first wife of 30 years
is mostly faceless, the
mental pictures and dreams
edited until only she
is unrecognizable.

And in moments of reflection
I am no longer adopted,
the step-siblings were,
but they are now
just like family, almost.

August 6, 2022

A WELL REHEARSED SILENCE

Of course there is something I ought
to say, moments like this require it,
it goes without saying, painfully.

I practiced lines for hours, rehearsed
in my dreams for weeks, knew
for years I’d be rendered mute.

My tongue swells, threatening
to escape my mouth or take refuge
deep within my esophagus.

Your silence is only compounding
my anxiety, how can I, a man
of words, be rendered silent

by the thought of speaking to you,
of telling you that I finally now
joyously have what I feared I wouldn’t ever.

A wife and lover deserves
better than this.

April 13, 2022

HOW WOULD I KNOW

It is highly likely
that I snored most
of last night, I cannot
be certain but my wife
says I did and she
is rarely wrong
about such things.

I would like
to blame it
on my back, discs
bulging where they
ought not, titanium
rods claiming they
hold the whole thing
together, but I
cannot be certain
of that either once
I slip into sleep.

I am tempted
to stay up all night
and see if I snore,
if the rods move,
but I know if I did
I‘d fall asleep
in the morning
and my snoring
and rods would again
be up to their tricks.

April 7, 2022

MY ANNA

Along the banks of the barge canal
in the village park, a man
older, his hair white, almost
a mane, sits on the breakwall
feeding Wonder bread
to the small flotilla of ducks.
Tearing shreds of crust
from a slice, he casts it
onto the water and smiles
as they bob for the crumbs.
He tells them the story
of his life as though
they were his oldest friends.
My Anna, he says,
was a special woman,
I met her one night
in the cramped vestibule
of an Indian take away
in London during a blackout.
We heard the sirens and then
a blast, not far off.
She grabbed my arm in fear.
She was from Marlow-on-Thames,
she lived in a small flat
in the Bottom, she worked
days in a millinery,
and at night tended bar
at the Local, until the war.
She’s been gone two years now
and I miss her terribly
especially late at night.
A goose slowly swims over
awaiting her meal, she
looks deeply into his eyes.
How are you, dearest Anna,
it is not the same without you
late at night when the silence
is broken again by the sirens.

First Published in Friends & Friendship Vol. 1, The Poet, 2021

June 4, 2020

THE RABBI

The old man peers at the yellowing book
then places it on the arm of the chair.
He gives the walker a sad, angry look,
and still struggling, looks up in mocking prayer.
Clutching the book, he limps to the table
and sinks onto the chair, risking a fall
that could reshatter his hip. Unable
to hear, he shouts to his wife, down the hall,
who brings the hearing aid and his glasses.
His eyes glow as the ancient words bring fire
to his voice, arms dance as though his class is
full of young minds that are his to inspire.
He settles into the chair, bent by age
and curses his body, now more a cage.

First published in The Right to Depart, Plain View Press (2008)

May 29, 2020

DEMENTIA

He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague shadow, sometimes present, sometimes faded into the background. He ex-wife is ever present, and he clings to her, despite her death, wondering if they will get back together. I don’t want to tell him that his wish will require a firm belief by them both in a hereafter, and that neither of them was very good at directions in any event, so who knows where they will end up.

For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:
Bird-of-the-day.com 

September 3, 2019

ON THE SEDGE

My wife pauses by the placard
in the nature preserve and tells me
that what I have been calling grasses
are in fact a sedge known as sawgrass.

She points out the warning that
it’s serrated on the edge and earned
its name from those who grasped
it without knowing or thinking first.

I feign listening bit she knows
my mind is elsewhere, knows I often
depart conversations suddenly
while maintaining a false presence.

She does not know I am 40 years
younger, pouring hydrogen peroxide
on the cut deep into the interossei
muscles when the glove slipped off

and the yucca I was boldly trying
to pull from the dry, stone-like soil
had decided this was the moment
to extract its final revenge.

June 29, 2019

LIBERACE WASN’T HERE

The white crested duck
waddles from the pond
headed for the path
on which we take
our morning walks.
He is accompanied
by wives or girlfriends,
we prefer to think
one of each for propriety’s sake.
Want to tell him
that Liberace tried
that hairstyle years ago,
and it never worked
on bad hair days,
and in any event
he always sashayed
and never waddled.

June 20, 2019

OCCLUSION

After the stroke
he couldn’t remember
much, was the woman

in white who bathed him
his wife or someone
he slept with once

before he had gotten
married. Monogamy
was a word that he

remembered, though not
its meaning, or why he
had sworn to abide it.

When the aide brought
in the flowers, they smelled
familiar, like the odor

of capon slowly boiling
on the Sabbath stove.
He heard the concerto

small radio tinny, but it
sounded strange, gut
of cat sawed across strings

crying out against
the injustice of it all
and the chair against

the window, was it one
he sat on at the edge
of the stage, bowing

to the audience as
Mozart’s crescendo
still echoed in his ears.

First appeared in the May 2019 Issue of The Broadkill Review