I wish you were -40 degree weather
so I'd have known to wrap myself up
in two layers of pants,
one pair of wool socks,
three sweaters and a tuque,
three pairs of mittens,
one of which had no fingers,
leaving only my cheeks exposed to frostbite
and they are pretty hardy for a body part
so useless.
But no, you told me your name was
that of a saint that feared the mother of God,
and so I ran out in my pajamas.
You should have told me you were
where farenheit and celsius met,
kissed,
had a family,
got divorced,
and lived out the rest of their days.

If I could write you a love song,
it wouldn't be very good.
I'm not made for
grand gestures,
I'm not made for majesty.
I think you knew that
when you fell in love with me.

Seriousness

Driving the Garden State Parkway to New York, I pointed out two crows
to a woman who believed crows always travel in threes. And later just
one crow eating the carcass of a squirrel. "The others are nearby," she
said, "hidden in trees." She was sure. Now and then she'd say "See!" and
a clear dark trinity of crows would be standing on the grass. I told her
she was wrong to under- or overestimate crows, and wondered out loud
if three crows together made any evolutionary sense. I was almost get-
ting serious now. Near Forked River, we saw five. "There's three," she
said, "and two others with a friend in a tree." I looked to see if she was
smiling. She wasn't. Or she was. "Men like you," she said, "need it writ-
ten down, notarized, and signed.

Stephen Dunn

The Video

When Laura was born, Ceri watched.
They all gathered around Mum's bed —
Dad and the midwife and Mum's sister
and Ceri. "Move over a bit," Dad said —
he was trying to focus the camcorder
on Mum's legs and the baby's head.

After she had a little sister,
and Mum had gone back to being thin,
and was twice as busy, Ceri played
the video again and again.
She watched Laura come out, and then,
in reverse, she made her go back in.

Fleur Adcock

Modern Rhapsody

I want to write
but the words don't come out,
they seem to get stuck
no matter which way my tongue turns,
left or right.

You see,
I have these stories I want to tell,
stories of great loves and great heroes,
most of them reside in my head.
But the words,
they just don't want to come out.

I'd like to think they're celebrating thanksgiving
inside my little head,
talking with their family
about world politics and the news,
and then Dissonance and Rhyming got into a fight
while Adjective and Noun announced their engagement,
Diction snorted at this moment
and got slapped instantly by Syntax,
no need to be like Hypocrite
(she was a black sheep, it was rumoured).
Whisper ate all the pudding
and didn't leave any for Metaphor,
but he made up for it by igniting the fire,
"like a dewfall", said Simile,
and everyone smiled and put her back
in her crib.
"Past her bedtime," they said.

This is what I imagine when
the words are stuck
and biblical stories get lost among
firing neurons
in my head.

I was so little when you hit me.
So little when you made me
kiss the floor
in humility.
I'd like to think those were lessons of love
but they weren't lovely lessons,
and love you see,
love is what you screwed up for me.