Mark Blaeuer lives a few miles outside Hot Springs, Arkansas. Over the past 45 years, his poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Antiphon, Blue Unicorn, El Portal, SurVision, and Windsor Review. A collection, Fragments of a Nocturne, was published in 2014 (Kelsay Books).
Love Poem
His wife believes her husband is her mother,
so he points to his chin: “Does your mother have a beard?”
“No,” she laughs, and his name bubbles up
from depth, but in five minutes he’s her mother again.
He doesn’t contradict. She adored her mother,
dead fourteen years last November.
He’s glad they can enjoy each other’s company.
The couple is off to the Women’s Center for a mammogram,
and she marvels: “You do awfully well
for a woman your age, but should you be driving?”
He tells her, “It’s alright, baby.”
He drowses in the waiting room until
a door opens. His lady smiles from her wheelchair,
under those cheery paintings that brighten the clinic’s corridor.
The two venture out in late sunlight, to the car.
He says, “How about Häagen-Dazs?”
A swirl toward the familiar: “I love you,” “I love you, too.”
This much has stayed the same.