Reassurance to My Future Spouse
…..
You may not know me yet,
but I’m learning just who you must be,
trusting you’re getting ready
for the rest of our lives.
…..
Perhaps you’re already emptying
several mental drawers, clearing psychic
spaces for another razor, another coffee cup,
disrobing the slender shoulders
of a dozen wooden hangers
in the closet of your subtle heart.
…..
Don’t worry, I’m not voyeuristic—
not strictly speaking anyway—
though I have been watching your
comings and goings—goings, mostly—
in the sector labeled maybe in my mind.
….
And you’ve surely bided your sweet time,
perhaps sometimes willingly, or as unwillingly
as I, waiting for the grip on our two fates—
on our two lines of blind perspective—
to converge at that distant but critical point
where we collide, and teeter, then tip
over an imagined ledge, falling, finally,
hopelessly into love. Meanwhile,
….
I’m enjoying the way the wind will want
to splay stray strands of hair across your face
as you pose for a corny photo
by a springtime pond, and how
the waves of your dear body, the surf
of your complicated soul, will form
and conform to the shores of mine—
and how this will work just as perfectly
the other way around.
….
…..
This poem first published in A Little Instability without Birds
(Finishing Line Press, 2006) and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-little-instability-without-birds-by-d-r-james/
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching collegewriting, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press).
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