Union

In the winter,
I married a small wooden box.
I carried my devotion around in a coal scuttle,
and named each of the kitchen utensils
as if they were children who might one day attend university
and, subsequently,
slowly forget us.

My husband was made of cherry wood,
wide as he was deep.
I mailed him the dust from the nursery
where we grew liniment and bitters
from window boxes buried under the floor boards.

One day, going on spring,
the sky turned the color of a fouled well.
It rained river perch;
they came down inside overcoats of ice, like a devil's fairy tale
and all the while,
my husband was one lung and I was the other--
with no heart in between,
inspiring and expiring
without any conscious thought at all.
_______

for Mary's Mixed Bag "connection" at Real Toads.