these are two poems from the LOVE section of poetry from Snowmelt to Roots—it felt nice to pair them together…
7 taking her for granted sometimes on a late afternoon when I’m hungry and feeling untended a pale avocado plant, windowing too far north I huff and think pitiful thoughts “she doesn’t appreciate me like I deserve— doesn’t even hear me doing these dishes…” but she does—I know she does and I hear when she empties the dishwasher while I’m still in bed and I don’t always show her the appreciation I feel for her part of the beauty of the thing is that, in a way, we get to take one another for granted how different would our home feel if every duty, rendered simply or given in love, had to be observed—had to be praised? and wouldn’t there be some fun lost in serving the other in ways unexpected and unasked? we take one another for granted like we take the pecan tree for granted many days we walk past, hardly looking up but sometimes we gather the little fruits and make pecan pie 8 tidal you take me as deeply as you can furious in one of my passions that comes and goes you swept up in the undertow laughing tumbling rolling underwater limbs out froth on fingers lifted to land laid gently head on warm sand soft enough to drift into dream still lapping hands caress your ankles —ZW
one of my first collections of poetry was Pablo Neruda’s Los Versos del Capitan. I loved the language, the adoration and the sensuality of it. when I had written an initial 50 poems for this collection, I thought I’d try my hand at some “marital love” poems. in marital love, sensuality is a gift—and so it time, conversation, and simple acts of serving and continuing to choose one another… like the dishes.
last night we laughed till tears with such immediacy about something that required many years of in-joking to even laugh about. what a gift.
these poems have numbers—I wrote 23 love poems for the collection, and these are numbers 7 and 8.
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I’ll be sharing more here soon
(trying to post every Wednesday),
or you can get the collection here.
peace,
Z