His Mother, Overheard
not to mention mother’s mother’s
diamond ring mother passed
to me when she passed
not to mention the expense
of fixing up the carriage house
behind her folks’ place just for now
not to mention she nearly lost
her eyesight monogramming
his handkerchiefs in cursive script
six months in he broke it off
left a note on her hope
chest saying you deserve better
not to mention, the shame, this cup
chipped—and what is this—
red all over my napkin
Driving Past Our Marriage House
I’m glad you can’t see how close the wisteria
is creeping under the sill of our old second story
bedroom window—you’d been so vigilant
those twenty years to keep it trimmed and trained
along the antique trellis bought to celebrate
our fifth anniversary. Such a shame,
those gutters you slipped on the roof and broke
your arm to clean—even after I warned you
not to after your third drink—are now choked
with muck of pine needles and maple leaves.
You’d be sick if you knew how tiny fists
of boxwood—planted on the day our son turned
three that grew along the flagstone
walk to reach his waist at eighteen—ended up
so spindly, inside branches brown, like an apple
rotted from the inside out. You always got such a kick
out of telling that story endlessly over drinks
about what the guy said after he crawled the attic floor
on his belly to lay the duct work for central air: damned
if not the best built I’ve seen. Would you remember now
how proud you were, how you beamed?
- Four Poems - August 19, 2021
- Two Poems - March 1, 2016
