Small Pleasures of a Long Marriage
I asked my husband:
Cumulus and cirrus,
but what’s the third one?
Thromboid, he replied.
Immaculate Conception
On a wall in our bedroom in a wooden frame
hangs a photograph of Gus the neurotic polar bear,
who spent his life swimming from one side
of his tank in the Central Park Zoo to the other.
It was a wedding gift from a former Parks employee
of my husband’s. She, who never married,
wrote in pencil at the bottom of her photo:
Happy married life together.
Every few years I notice a live centipede sealed
inside the glass, and I get some toilet paper
and I set the picture back side up on our bed
and I undo all the metal clips and pull off
the rear and the slab of cardboard and the beveled
mat and the photo and I nab the bug and the skinny legs
it’s shed, and I clean the glass thoroughly and put the whole
thing back together.
How the hell, I ask my husband of almost forty years,
as we get into bed, can this be? We laugh at the mysteries
of the persistent life of the universe, and then we turn out
the lights, spoon, and go to sleep.
This Is the Kind of News
that turns my husband on:
the second set in the men’s
final went on for five hours.
This is the stuff I traffic in:
remember how frustrated
I was with that chord
progression? Today it fell
into place; isn’t learning
funny?
He’ll say people have
no idea how tight
the city’s budget
is going to be next year.
I’ll say I’m in love
with the narrator
of this novel and I’ll pull
it out and read him
a sentence that charmed
me
but he’s still back
there with the effects
of the pandemic
that haven’t yet
been felt, fiscally
speaking
while I’m dying
to tell him about
this student of mine
who wrote such a beautiful
poem about her broken
family but I see
his face and I know
there’s no way
in for him though I’m talking
about love and human
potential and the small
miracle of making beauty
in this world of pain and could it be
that’s what he’s trying
to say when he insists I drop
whatever I’m doing
to come and watch
the replay of a perfect
goal?
He Always Hits
the note
he wants;
in all these
years
of marriage
I’ve never
heard him
flat.
He says
commit
no matter
what
comes
out.
Easy
for you
to say,
I bray.
But then
one day
I take
his advice
and sing
like I mean
it and
I do, I do.
