Ode to Hunger
How I crave the strawberries
we bought on a road
in Cyprus the day we got married.
Their scent was divine & we forgot
to eat them.
from O
and we forgot to eat them
marriage poems
Our lives happen between the memorable.
“Highlights and Interstices”
by Jack Gilbert (1925-2012)
We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? Our lives happen between
the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual
breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about
her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.
I feel that I would like to go there
I’m always in awe of William Carlos Williams who was not only a stunning, revolutionary poet but also a respected doctor for more than 40 years.
“The Widow’s Lament in Springtime”
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
live in the layers 