For Valentine’s Day, enjoy these two wife/husband poems–which are normally performed simultaneously–from Helen Wing.
—
Duet
I am the wind
You think you are the strong and silent type,
but I know you to be
a hundred
different
men.
You want to be a husband,
I want you to be a tree.
You want to be definable
I want to be able to pick each fruit as it ripens
and not wait for harvest.
You think in whole
when
all that I want
is
a thousand different pieces
for you to mix with me,
to shape
and
reshape
and
shape
and
reshape
the puzzle of your leaves
in a blinding orange chaos
refracting in the greens of
your two hundred
different
eyes.
You want to be a husband,
You who will never be that to me:
I am the wind.
You are not the wind
You are not the wind,
you are the wife.
It’s not that I want to be a husband
as you say.
I don’t want to be definable
by
you.
That, I can do myself.
I could be a tree,
easily,
if that were me,
and the hundred different faces
you
impute
reflect nothing of the visage standing here
clad in the verdant fires,
the felt hats and the fake furs
of your
bottled
hurricane.
I am not a vista, a view you see
from the veranda
of
your
stippling,
shatter-shutter
mind.
Turn those leaves aside –
use the breezes in your feigning throat
to find the branch beneath.
The branch,
this branch
has the finer,
firmer
reach.
I don’t want to be the husband;
I want you to be the wife.
You are not the wind to me.
***
Interested in submitting poetry to The Good Men Project? Check out our guidelines.
Like The Good Men Project on Facebook
Photo by Yinan Chen /Flickr
The post Duet appeared first on The Good Men Project.