Encounters: For Valentine’s Day

Greetings, readers. Happy Valentine’s Day, or Galentine’s Day, or whatever day it is for you. One thing it is for all of us is Saturday, and this post sends you a poem I wrote for my husband, Hoyt Edge. It’s published in my second book, From the Porch to the Page: A Guidebook for the Writing Life.

Encounters

~~For survivor Hoyt, my husband, who dreams and dares

 

Maxine Kumin writes of animals—

their habits, needs and wants.

Like humans, the wild ones spend

five senses and hidden powers to survive.

 

Surviving, you’re with me at the table.

Our food is spread before us:

bread and cheese and wine.

 

I learn you are a man truly spared.

Five lions gave you up one African night,

your jeep stuck in spinning sand.

Unmoving in your seat, you think:

The End.      It’s been a good life.

 

I think of Maxine’s poem,

“Encounter in August” –

a bear stole into her camp,

looked her in the face,

ate her beans,

lumbered back into the wild.

 

Your lions spread themselves atop the road,

dazed and gorged by the bloody kill,

too poor-sighted to understand

the difference between machine and man.

 

Their eyes glowed in steady headlights

while you surveyed memories spread before you

like bread and cheese and wine.

 

Jungle kings, dazed and weary,

satisfied and dull,

sauntered back into the wild.

—END—

Thanks for reading!

Your writer on the wing,

Charlene