April 4, Poem 4 - Gratitude

Gratitude

for Karen Finneyfrock

Think film – possibly noir, a city

constantly threatening to rain, a thirst

for beer and coffee. Think how a woman

smells when she’s lived in an old house,

and the house (if your memory is correct)

is comfortable in its dark woods. Think

haunted – the good kind – the woman’s

walls dressed in velvets, her bed low

off the ground and so comfortable, you

more than once lie on it and fall asleep

in the middle of telling her a fantastical

story. If further, I said this house,

this woman, owned a costume-closet

and that I once donned a lion-cub

costume meant for a 13year old and went

out into the threatening city and the woman

made it okay to be me and every knotted thing

I am, and be love in that city – with my fists

finally open into small saucers of praise,

would you believe – that the woman

too, smelled as comfortable as the wood?

And if I say, we found several kinds

of ways to make love, and to be lovers,

even in parts of years when we weren’t,

that we put our poems in each other’s

mouths, our tongues, fat snails for each

other’s delicacy, and that sometimes we’ve had

to wade through each other’s sadness, patient,

to find the person we didn’t know existed

beneath, and that every time, it was worth it,

such that 11 years came and fell away

and we were sure we were forever

even when we weren’t lovers – what

could you then tell me/us about what love is?

Think the patience of seasons. Think

opposite coasts – how hard you pushed

against good sense sometimes until it became

definition, certainty, gratitude.

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