Poetry - Installment #1

I will be posting my poetry, old and (hopefully) new, from time to time. I would love your feedback - a cornerstone of the writing process. Thanks!

Below is my first submission to the blogosphere. I might still have a video of me reciting this and one other poem - I will try to find it and will post the link if that search is successful. And now, without further adooo...



Fifty-Five Years
***

My grandfather was a stubborn man, and my grandmother, she
was the only one who could tell him that the story he was telling was
the same story, the same


story that we had all heard so many times before
and it makes me think, how do you stay married to someone who tells stories over and over again
it makes me think that she was just a bit stubborn herself

but I know exactly why he stayed married to her, you see,
I would watch baseball with him in the living room, and boy, did we argue– he was indignant every time I shushed him,
but damn it! I just wanted to hear what the announcers had to say about Chipper Jones–

but then, we would stop– stop watching, stop arguing, stop– and listen
to my grandmother
laughing

and even though I have no idea what was going on in those old movies she watched, I do know
that for all their unmitigated talent,
Cary Grant’s, Katherine Hepburn’s, Jimmy Stewart’s greatest accomplishment

was to make my grandmother laugh,
that laugh that echoed so joyously throughout the house, that made you forget why on Earth you were arguing in the first place!
That laugh that made you happy.

My grandfather was a stubborn man, and my grandmother, she
was the only one who could tell him that the story he was telling was
the same story, the same


story that we had all heard so many times before
and it makes me think, how do you stay married to someone who tells stories over and over again –
well, she let us see for ourselves after she passed away in 2001.

That Christmas brought the addition of a new family member, a kitten that I named Aiko – Japanese for “love” –
and while my grandfather was none too pleased, that little runaway needed a home,
so by God, I wasn’t taking “no” for an answer!

But he was the one who made her exercise, catching sunlight off his watch and laughing
as she prowled, hunting the reflections on the wall, he was the one who renamed her “Aiko Rosita”
and let her slumber in his bed all day long, unable to resist her cries for attention

And as he lay dreaming on his deathbed, she was “Aiko Rosita, savior of Coral Gables,”
the feline heroine who saved our town from the clutches of evil, but I think her real act of heroism was to show us
just how tender this old curmudgeon could be –

She was my grandmother reincarnated, I have no doubt, as beautiful as ever in her soft fur and cool amber tones,
showing us just why she did stay married to this man
for the last fifty-five years of her life.