Apple Fritter and a
Single Rose
by Donal Mahoney
After
30 years together,
Carol
tells me late one evening
in
the manner of a quiet wife
that
I have yet to write a poem
about
her, something she
will
never understand in light
of
all those other poems
she
says I wrote
about
those other women
before
she drove North.
And
so I tell her once again
I
wrote those other poems
about
no women I ever knew
the
way I now know her
even
if I saw them once or twice
for
dinner, maybe,
and
a little vodka
over
lime and ice.
Near
midnight, though,
she
says again
in
the manner of a quiet wife
it's
been thirty years
and
still no poem.
When
morning comes
I
motor off to town to buy
a
paper and a poem
for
Carol
but
find instead
undulating
in a big glass case
an
apple fritter,
tanned
and glistening,
lying
there just waiting.
So
I buy the lovely fritter
and
a single long-stem rose
orphaned
near the register,
roaring
red, and still
at
full attention.
I
bring them home but find
Carol
still asleep
and
so I put the fritter
on
the breadboard
and
the rose right next to it,
at
the proper angle.
When
she wakes I hope
the
fritter and the rose
will
buy me time until
somewhere
in the attic
of
my mind I find
a
poem that says
more
about us than
this
apple fritter,
tanned
and glistening,
lying
there just waiting,
and
a single long-stem rose,
roaring
red, and still
at
full attention.
~
first published in Public Republic
