Pro Tip: Marry a spouse who inspires poetry.*
*For the right reasons. Thanks to my wife Heather, for putting up with her occasionally poetic husband, and for always showing me that the real art is how we live and love. And big thanks, again, to the team at The Good Men Project for publishing my work. Two new poems, below, and all the previous ones, here.
The Ways My Wife Tells Me
She doesn’t compare parts of me to nature, or find similes—much less metaphors—in the way I speak or smile; she does not liken me to notable or minor characters from classic texts; she never feels inclined, her inhibitions lowered by the wine she seldom drinks, to wax rhapsodic about how I make her feel the way no other…; she is not a fan of PDA or anything that needily shrieks look at us!; she is a mother with an endless reserve of encomiums for the children she bore, and after I came to accept this I learned to cherish it; she doesn’t adore me the way she does our dog—even or especially when he curls up on freshly-washed sheets; she understands, instinctively, that a meal made with intent is a novel, the simple act of acceptance a poem that ceaselessly composes itself; she does not apologize for lacking a particular ease with words that her husband possesses; take me as I am she’s never said; above all, she knows show don’t tell is a lesson that makes life into art, and men who happen to be writers do well to remember.
A Fearsome Love
Some writers may but many,
being experts
at observation and imitation,
will not or else cannot
do things they describe, or
are driven to capture things
they dream about
achieving…
Turning pages to find
a better version of their world or,
at times, themselves.
It’s those whose lives are art
(or else, artless)
that often inspire artists
to attempt—and fail—
to properly illustrate or explain
what moves them, prompting
such adoration, or envy.
My wife is a genius of love,
and I watch her
go about the business of loving:
our children, all creatures,
her work, this world.
It’s a type of love I fear at times:
the totality of it;
its essence immutable,
unhindered by intent or
even awareness.
I’m afraid of that love
—at times—the same way
I think about not being
able to count every number,
or understand the infinity
of expanding space,
Love being as close to Eternity
on Earth as we get
in this life.
