i.
So we presented ourselves
to some bored local judge
dressed in our least crumpled finery,
accepted the baffled family diners
and the checks, then came back
to our rented rooms and wondered
how this changed us.
We’d already amassed
cast-off silverware and china,
mirrors and chairs from the roadside,
lamps and radios bargained from heaps
of dated mayhem in a down-and-out
old barn in the woodland damp
of mid-coast Maine.
We were married to Maine,
each in our separate terrain, you
on an icy cliff edge by the sea, me
humbled in a grove of ancient cedar
or an isolated glade ringed by white pine,
pent with the possibility of deer and mother
turkeys trailed by endless hopping chicks.
We both loved the fires
you meticulously stoked in our camp,
the dark lake eerie with loon wails
and the human laughs of teals.
We loved the night winds
and the shimmy of starlight
through the maddened branches
when a storm muscled in,
lightning scarier than bears,
thunder moving us together
like nothing else ever could.
ii.
The space between us
in the canoe is where
our lives might have been –
life vests not worn;
flip flops cast off;
a canvas tote filled
with peasant bread,
odd smokey local cheddar,
purple grapes and wine –
no safety gear or shoes
for nimble walking
over rutted, shaky ground –
just food we’d pack
for a solo jaunt anyway,
except, perhaps
for the wine.
We were caught once
in the marsh weeds,
the eely creek
a dead-end alleyway
I needed to explore.
You’d had too much
sun and wine,
too much
aimless agitation,
rowing nowhere
over the wind-raked rivulets,
against the brawny heat
and the unanticipated
roiling of the clouds.
We tried to shrug it off but
were stranded in gauzy,
otherworldly light
and crawling vegetation,
a fierce storm lowering.
A kindly passing boatman
dragged us out with pole and rope.
We were chastened,
dopey with fatigue,
embarrassment, and
flustered gratitude.
We offered him
our uneaten grapes and cheese,
tipped them into his boat
as he glided greenly
into the boggling haze.
We were always kind to others,
always aware of kindness
as a shared belief in virtue, you
with your altar boy conditioning,
a scamp from way back,
but venerating the rituals
and holy offerings of
stringently regulated spasms
of chastening peace,
me with my residue of faith
in saints and sinners, desperate
for signs of detectable, inviolable life.
iii.
Fire doused, camp struck, and home
is soup cans and threadbare, dusty brocade.
Even the sea we live by tosses with
frothy disdain, riddled with glimmers
of more remarkable tide pools on craggier,
more abundant, evergreen shores.
iv.
Peeling the carrots, I wonder
what will be left when I leave
and how this leaving will change us.
There will be artifacts: wooden bowls
scored with years of dinnertime blades;
a scoff of bedclothes, frayed from over-
wear and washing; a trove of stones slipped
into pockets or packs, their origins forgotten;
and the usual detritus of cards and ticket stubs,
testaments to doings and occasions, forgotten
like the stones.
Kate Falvey has been published in many journals and anthologies; in a full-length collection, The Language of Little Girls (David Robert Books); and in two chapbooks, What the Sea Washes Up (Dancing Girl Press) and Morning Constitutional in Sunhat and Bolero (Green Fuse Poetic Arts). She co-founded (with Monique Ferrell) and for ten years edited the 2 Bridges Review, published through City Tech (City University of New York) where she teaches, and is an associate editor for the Bellevue Literary Review.
Sparks of Calliope 