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Maxine Kumin Poems
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Appetite
I eat these
wild red raspberries
still warm from the sun
and smelling faintly of jewelweed
in memory of my father
tucking the napkin
under his chin and bending
over an ironstone bowl
of the bright drupelets
awash in cream
my father
with the sigh of a man
who has seen all and been redeemed
said time after time
as he lifted his spoon
men kill for this.
After Love
Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
and overhead, a plane
singsongs, coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self
lay lightly down, and slept.
The Long Marriage
The sweet jazz
of their college days
spools over them
where they lie
on the dark lake
of night growing
old unevenly:
the sexual thrill
of Peewee Russell's
clarinet; Jack
Teagarden's trombone
half syrup, half
sobbing slide;
Erroll Garner's
rusty hum-along
over the ivories;
and Glen Miller's
plane going down
again before sleep
repossesses them…
Torschlusspanik.
Of course
the Germans have
a word for it,
the shutting of
the door,
the bowels' terror
that one will go
before
the other as
the clattering horse
hooves near.
Continuum: a Love Poem
going for grapes with
ladder and pail in
the first slashing rain
of September rain
steeping the dust
in a joyous squelch they sky
standing up like steam
from a kettle of grapes
at the boil wild fox grapes
wickedly high tangled in must
of cobweb and bug spit
going for grapes year
after year we two with
ladder and pail stained
with the rain of grapes
our private language
Wagons
Their wheelchairs are Conestoga wagons drawn
into the arc of a circle at 2 P.M.
Elsie, Gladys, Hazel, Fanny, Dora
whose names were coinage after the First World War
remember their parents tuned to the Fireside Chats,
remember in school being taught to hate the Japs.
They sit attentive as seals awaiting their fish
as the therapist sings out her cheerful directives:
Square the shoulders, lean back, straighten the knee
and lift! Tighten, lift and hold, Ladies!
They will retrain the side all but lost in a stroke,
the spinal cord mashed but not severed in traffic.
They will learn to adjust to their newly replaced
hips, they will walk on feet of shapely plastic.
This darling child in charge of their destiny
will lead them forward across the prairie.
"Appetite" by Maxine Kumin, from Selected Poems: 1960–1990
"After Love" by Maxine Kumin, from Selected Poems: 1960–1990
"The Long Marriage" by Maxine Kumin, from The Long Marriage: Poems
"Continuum: a Love Poem" by Maxine Kumin, from Selected Poems: 1960–1990
"Wagons" by Maxine Kumin, from The Long Marriage: Poems
© W.W. Norton and Co. All poems reprinted with permission.
W.W. Norton and Co.
500 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10110
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