Poem: Love Poem To My Husband Of Thirty-one Years

Love Poem To My Husband Of Thirty-one Years

 I watch you walk up our front path, 

the entire right side of your body, 

stiff and unbending, your leg, 

dragging on the ground, 

your arm not moving. 

Six different times you ask me 

the date of our daughter's wedding, 

seem surprised each time, 

forget who called, though you can name 

obscure desert animals, 

and every detail of events 

that took place in 3 B.C. 

You complain now of pain 

in your muscles, of swimming at the Y 

where a 76-year-old man tells you 

you swim too slowly. 

I imagine a world in which 

you cannot move.

Most days, I force myself to look 

only into the past; 

remember you, singing 

and playing your guitar: "Black, 

black is the color of my true love's hair," 

you sang, and each time you came into a room 

how my love for you caught in my throat, 

how handsome you were, how strong 

and muscular, how the sun 

lit your blond hair.

Now I pretend not to notice 

the trouble you have buttoning 

your shirt, and yes, I am terrified 

and no, I cannot tell you.

The future is a murky lake. 

I am afraid of the monsters 

who wait just below its surface. 

Even in our mahogany bed, I am not safe. 

Each day, I swim toward 

everything I didn't want to know.

     Maria Mazziotti Gillan

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.