Day 18

I’ve been preoccupied all day by other peoples’ poetry–and I have more of it to deal with–which meant getting original today has been difficult. I’m not really satisfied with today’s poem, mostly because I was never able to figure out what kind of poem this wanted to be–a love poem, an ironic poem about love, a personal moment. It’s honest, but with an overly precious moment at the end. Some days it just doesn’t work.

The prompt, by the way, was to title the poem “to” something, and the more I fiddled with that, the more frustrated I got, which is undoubtedly why I decided to write a poem to Amy, because that always relieves my frustrations. It’s kind of disgusting, I suppose, how gooey we are to each other after nearly ten years, but it’s been the best period of my life and I wouldn’t trade a second of it.

To Amy

This morning, you were there again,
like most mornings for nearly ten
years now. And, I hope, for another ten
and ten and ten and ten and ten again
and so forth and so on. Each morning when
I’m wakened by our cats’ hunger–at ten
to seven generally–I take in
your rumpled hair before I feed them.

I know what important–your shoulder’s curve,
eyelid’s flutter, your presence here, with me,
another day. We’ve never guaranteed
each other more than that, but we move
in orbit around each other, tugged
by our gravities into a kiss.
(Like I’d end on “hug.”)