Love


Dark falls on this mid-western town where we once lived when myths collided. Dusk has hidden the bridge in the river which slides and deepens to become the water


the hero crossed on his way to hell.


Not far from here is our old apartment. We had a kitchen and an Amish table. We had a view. And we discovered there love had the feather and muscle of wings


and had come to live with us, 


We had two infant children one of whom was touched by death in this town and spared: and when the hero


was hailed by his comrades in hell their mouths opened and their voices failed and there is no knowing what they would have asked about a life they had shared and lost.


I am your wife.


It was years ago. Our child is healed. We love each other still. Across our day-to-day and ordinary distances we speak plainly. We hear each other clearly.


And yet I want to return to you


on the bridge of the Iowa river as you were, with snow on the shoulders of your coat and a car passing with its headlights on:


I see you as a hero in a text – the image blazing and the edges gilded –


and I long to cry out the epic question my dear companion:


Will we ever live so intensely again? Will love come to us again and be so formidable at rest it offered us ascension even to look at him?


But the words are shadows and you cannot hear me. You walk away and I cannot follow.


40 VERSE 2025 [30] [25] [20] [5]


[10]


[15]


[1] mid-western town: Iowa


GLOSSARY GLOSSARY


[6] hero: Aeneas, the hero of the Aeneid, who makes a journey to the underworld in Book 6, one of the very few mortals to ever visit the dead


[8] Amish: relating to the Amish sect (a strict Mennonite community) who make plain, unadorned furniture


[30] gilded: covered thinly with gold leaf


[35]


[31] epic: a long poem narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or 


[35] ascension: rising to a higher level


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