St. Catharines light in the afternoon: lead oxide, pink white, dry mud shadows.
They lay on her living room carpet and Anthony gloated over Milly
Her cotton nightgown, her long back, and round shoulders: proof at last.
"So this is gloating. It is better to gloat than to doubt. It took me a long time."

Her clean faded quilt brought from the balcony rail: it
Smells of clean laundry and cold air and the thrill of their power.
He’s proud to be the lover of a heroine,
And happy that he can see her this way.”

Picnic kisses tasting of smoked oysters and beer.
There were never friendly kisses of love before?
"Milly, I love hearing how you defied the adults."

He told Hansel and Gretel to her child, who had strep throat,
And told it again, knowing it would work,

Seeing the bookshelves, seeing her notebooks,
Knowing that he would have his life after all:

                      The mispronounced words of a solitary reader,
                       The red skirt on the chair, the gold necklace of coins.


                   Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
Copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson

They Were Children Together

I remember her white poet shirt and clean clear face.
She is on stage at the Mansion House, a St. Catharines bar:
Songs she wrote and songs learned from the radio
Brag of coarse and earthy evenings.
She sang, “…when I’m drunk I’m a nihilist…”

She jokes that her life is a documentary limerick.
She has two children.
She’s the eager daughter of rich peasants.
Impulse, defiance, insults, she defends as truth and a joke.

“I’m going to tell him you’re his father,”
She said to her best  friend while I listened.
“You don’t have to pay.
I told my parents you’re the father”
And while he cried she said:
“You could make everything all right for me.”


Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson

(this poem was published May 2002 in Shadow Voices)