to a poet
The “thing-ness” of your poems impressed me.
By that I mean that many were the nouns
and that, among them, it seemed most were concrete
(unlike the previous line) and colorful, or colored –
the Lenten rose, the rotting meat, the bay,
Your lover’s back, your father sleeping, old,
And, by inference, grey, in the adjacent room.
You, though, seemed to be on hold –
different from me, holding back perhaps
the thing that would crack you in two, the too-hard thing:
and here we move to me: my husband’s right-hand fingers
scrabbling at his left, where his wedding ring
should be, and I, assuring him I had it.
That siren wailed for me.