Doris' Daughter

Doris’s daughter was an unhappy mate. Last night

loose winds, rain, heavy black curlers rolled up

and over the eiderdown dunes, all along our bare

back coast in search of a dallying husband.

Fortunately, forewarned, we’d managed to batten

the hatches, lay in enough of the devil’s courage

to see us through the worst of the unhinging rampage,

thankful for having kept to our knitting, mindful

of the obligation to lie and sleep within the confines

of our own widow maker’s conjugal web.  

 

This morning, exhausted and denuded of

all my poorly remembered prayers, I woke  

to the revivified light of a chastened sun and  

rejoined the browbeaten congregation

tasked with salvaging those wayward ships

caught unaware, dim-witted to the danger

of a tempestuous nor’easter’s fury

for the fickle nature of a man’s appetite

to linger in places he has no reason or

purpose for being, other than the boy’s urge.    

 

Looking up, I spotted a circling erne, read

in its recognition of our pitiful plight,

the harsh truth about love. For better or

worse, these hills we’ve harnessed, drawn water from

to seed our life’s acres, is where we’ll lie and lay

long after the dust of this turbulent night’s seethe has settled.

Unlike the Gods, it seems, men have no grant

of liberty against the rage of a jealous wife’s green-eyed rant.

Though truth be told, best mates need none,

save the occasional wreck of a bruised ship smoking in the harbor.  

Ken e Bujold

Reviews

[W. Barrett Munn]

If Yeats were alive, he would be nervous.

[emmajoygreen]

Start to finish you have presented. created, a series of happenings like an exessive delight in where you are, what you have discovered! ' heavy black rollers tromping up and down the coast, all along our well-bred eiderdown dunes.' How wonderfully visual! Then, then - you continue, brows raised to, '‘we mate for life.’ For better or worse, through bad times and squalls, no matter how bitter the teacup’s tempest,' - that is true love without expectation, just.. take it how it is. Real.