Saturday Mornings in CinCity

-

I (Heart) My Wife
By Darlyn Finch

"I (Heart) My Wife"
the bumper sticker read
in the window of the pickup truck
ahead of me at the red light,
and I burst into tears
for no particular reason
I could explain
to the crossing guard on the corner
or even to the man driving the truck,
who looked quite ordinary,
and did not realize
those four happy words
could rip a woman's heart out
under certain circumstances,
when she's one man's abscessed tooth,
and another's dirty little secret.

Then I stopped to wonder,
as I blew my nose
and wiped my eyes,
whether the man had bought the bumper sticker
at all, or if his wife had perhaps
stuck it there,
in the window behind his head,
as a message to women like me,
whom she surely knows are sitting
at every red light
in every town,
wishing they could one day be
someone's very best thing.


And, while you're driving around town today,
here's a sampling of some hometown favorites,
Over the Rhine, from their new CD, the Trumpet Child.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 4, 2008 at 7:53 AM

    Wow--so much buried in these simple lines, the best being the agony of being one man's abcessed tooth and one man's dirty little secret. Those tears mark the pain of betrayals on both sides of the front door.

    And the universal desire to become or remain "someone's very best thing."

    The universal disappointment not to.

    ReplyDelete
  2. La FraméricaineOctober 4, 2008 at 8:20 AM

    I do so love that in the midst of it all you manage to post poetry. I barely manage to empty the waste baskets and garbage cans, so getting my poetry fix at your house is always nice.

    Thank you again.

    BTW, I thought of you last night after seeing "Blindness" and then going to a small kiosk and being, as I am wont to, distracted by shiny (colorful, glass) objects, buying them, and putting them in the holes in my earlobes. Tantamount to an injection of euphoria without the withdrawal.

    Amitiés,

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 13, 2008 at 6:13 AM

    So nice to see that Darlyn's poem touched your heart. It is from her collection Red Wax Rose. (www.redwaxrose.com, also available at amazon.com)

    She is a great lady and her words have touched the hearts of many. That poem is one of my favorites as well.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

Popular posts from this blog

10 Things I Love That Start With the Letter E

-
Image
Game imported from Sweet Annie at Blissful Bohemian . Name ten things you love that begin with a specific letter. In my case, the letter E. So here goes: 1. Well, first of all there's elephants . Who doesn't love those cute little faces?? And what's not to love? Elephants are actually a lot like humans. They laugh and cry. They grieve over their dead. They play games with each other and have fantastic memories so they can even remember the rules and not go to bed mad. 2. Then there's Engelbert Humperdinck, who I don't actually love and his singing's just on this side of okay, but I do love his name. 3. I luuuuuuv eggs , deviled. Nothing fancy, just classic. Best Basic Deviled Eggs 6 eggs, hard cooked and peeled 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 teaspoon yellow mustard 3/4 teaspoon white wine vinegar pinch of salt (optional) fresh ground black pepper (optional) smoked paprika (optional) Cut eggs in half. Arrange egg whites cut side up on a serving plate and put the yolks
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o
Read more

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t
Read more