Here's a new poem, quite unlike what I normally write -- but I've begun to explore the genre between prose and poetry. I appreciate any feedback you all care to offer.





Boston Marriage

Beside the hydrangeas, we grew hostas
that thrived in the shadows and damp,
formed a lush shoulder to the heart-shaped leaves.

We kept a Norwegian
Elkhound we named Tania.

Widowed, he took me with my own
lacks and longings as his daily companion.
He, much older than I, understood.

We shared radio broadcasts
of Dvorak, Prokofiev, Bartok,
Shostakovich, our love
of orchestrated discord.

I took care and he took care,
took time, measure, though granted
not sharing our most intimate strengths
and weaknesses, that give and give.

On a block of working families broken
and mended and managing in their own ways,
we handed candy to witch and fairy maid,
arrived at garden parties bearing dolmades
rolled in leaves from the neighborhood grapevine.

Every marriage is contract, expanse,
spoken of or not, from dowry to consent,
eloped or staged, urine test
to shotgun, dreamed of or dreaded,
from pillowtalk to bent knee,
arranged, disarrayed, settling,
rash with passion.

Women like me, we couldn’t even jump
the broom like slaves. Spinstered yes,
or convented, bearded or lone, but to love
another woman openly was an impossibility
made more dear by that. I was no flapper
nor revolutionist. From Corfu in ’44 to this place,
I hid my affairs as I could, and under such,
they dwindled, ended, in a pattern like fallen leaves.

I met him in my long past ripeness
and so we set up house, in a strong Victorian ,
catalpa in the backyard, a quiet life
with breaks of broken music.
 

And when after seventeen years together,
he was struck and dragged by that car,
snatched from my clasped hand on our evening
constitutional, I could do nothing at all
but watch him thump and shred along the road
until the very end of our life together,
feel the sudden true bereavement of a wife.