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Dave Bonta
in my old cloth suit
my usual answer
is to dance
dressed in a new disappointment
I go blank as
any messenger
dressed or undressed
after a little dancing
how little clothes cover us
so we lie
in our stockings and drawers
and all our clothes sleep
So close,
So far away,
Ubiquitous,
Non-existent,
I feel your warmth when you’re near,
The times few and far between,
The laughs and smiles that we share,
Before you vanish from the scene,
I call to prompt conversation,
Never certain that you’ll answer,
Naively hopeful for a response,
Typically ending in disappointment,
Out of the blue you call,
To talk and catch up,
Feeling the same chemistry as before,
Feeling as though we never stopped,
If everything is impermanent why do you want it
I don’t want anything for ever
You will disappoint everyone
Then you will be free
Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,
The father of many children, born of a noble mother,
All raised there
In the great mansion—house, at the edge of town.
Note the cedar tree on the lawn!
I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford,
The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors—
Resting under my cedar tree at evening.
The years went on.
I sent the girls to Europe;
I dowered them when married.
I gave the boys money to start in business.
They were strong children, promising as apples
Before the bitten places show.
But John fled the country in disgrace.
Jenny died in child-birth—
My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the “Octoroon.”
But then at twenty-one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.
I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
How proud my mother was of the mansion
How proud of father’s rise in the world!
And how my father loved and watched us,
And guarded our happiness.
But I believe the house was a curse,
For father’s fortune was little beside it;
And when my husband found he had married
A girl who was really poor,
He taunted me with the spires,
And called the house a fraud on the world,
A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry not to be had;