Walt McDonald
ANNIVERSARY WALTZ
Three years since you said no and flew away.
I pictured you married with babies, a villa
in Tahiti. Then I turned and you were there
on the stairs before the opera started, dangling maybe
across the lobby for me, for me. Or was it only hello,
a civil greeting? If the cashier had hitched her girdle,
fumbled the bills, or sneezed, you might have disappeared,
carried along by the throng. Friends would have said,
They missed each other by seconds. I remember
the cashier's hand had a diamond, tiny as an eye blink,
and she dealt my change like black jack, glanced up,
Madonna Destiny with a wrinkled, happy face--after all,
this was an opera in Texas, darling, not a strip show.
I turned, and there you were, watching me
by the rail--that dazzling smile, those eyes.
In the opera, the dashing American would sail back
but with a bride. Madame Butterfly would die
by her own blade, after the purest aria
money could buy. Love's a dangerous game
at best, but Darling, you stood your ground,
you knew what I'd see. Oh, you had time to turn
and disappear before I veered with a ticket,
before I could bump my way politely through the crowd.
In seconds, step by step, decades of ecstasy
and children we might have rose up and swirled
like sugarplums in my head. You watched,
you bet it all. Straw turned to silk and gold,
like Rumpelstiltskin there in fairy tales--
then we were together on the stairs, you without a ring
or villa in Tahiti, showing me how to say home.
AFTER LIVING A LONG TIME ALONE
She reaches high in the pantry, no ladder, but tiptoe
on a kitchen chair, a pirouette at eighty.
Whatever's on the top shelf topples.
The spindly left leg twists and snaps,
and she's down, back broken, no phone
she could reach. No one to call
who could hear, but anyway she calls,
the pain calls, the wet jaw opens
and she screams. Aunt Ethel never screamed,
but now she tried. But, paralyzed,
she couldn't gasp, could barely breathe.
Or screamed, but no one heard.
Love, while dying did you call
for indifferent nephews, big-eared
and gawky, cell phones dangling
from our belts like pistols--
Dang, we're tough. We should have choked
on power lunches, sensing something wrong,
tugging at ties, a dozen cell phones
useful as keys, and not one buzzed.
All that, a week before I knocked
and shouted, peered in the window
and rang and rang your bell,
then kicked the back door down.
Contributor's Note
