December 2018
David Graham
grahamd@ripon.edu
grahamd@ripon.edu
Author’s Note: I retired in 2016 after 30 years in Wisconsin, where I taught at Ripon College, and my wife and I then moved back to our native upstate NY. I've published a number of books of poetry and my work is also easy to find online, in this journal as well as many others. A gallery of my photography is is also available here: http://instagram.com/doctorjazz
This month’s Women/Men theme got me thinking of my parents’ sixty-three year marriage, which ended only with my father’s death. Mom’s care for Dad during his long descent into dementia was an example of how complicated an enduring love can be. In my poem “Fidelity” Dexter and Molly are not my parents, exactly, but it wouldn’t be wrong to see some similarities.
My Poetic License column this month wonders if, in the current political climate, it is possible to be patriotic without being angry. My answer involves a close look at William Stafford.
This month’s Women/Men theme got me thinking of my parents’ sixty-three year marriage, which ended only with my father’s death. Mom’s care for Dad during his long descent into dementia was an example of how complicated an enduring love can be. In my poem “Fidelity” Dexter and Molly are not my parents, exactly, but it wouldn’t be wrong to see some similarities.
My Poetic License column this month wonders if, in the current political climate, it is possible to be patriotic without being angry. My answer involves a close look at William Stafford.
Fidelity
Dexter stares at his shoe.
Molly watches him, hearing
the buzz of fluorescent lights,
sharp beeping at the nurse's station.
Fifty-six years since their wedding:
she knows she'll die with his scent
on her fingers, in her hair,
some phrase he said over and over
a dimming echo in her ears.
Dexter looks up and smiles.
He's sweet, she knows that's something.
Always a sweetheart. But
he's got toast crumbs all over his shirt,
dab of yogurt she should wipe off his cheek.
And eyes dead flat--he has no name
for her, no recognition at all. He'll die
without the slightest whiff of her
in his head. He'll probably die smiling.
-first published in The Writer (2008)
© 2018 David Graham
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF