In the end we are all light
by Liz Rosenberg
1 I love how old men carry purses for their wives,
2 those stiff light beige or navy wedge-shaped bags
3 that match the women's pumps,
4 with small gold clasps that click open and shut.
5 The men drowse off in medical center waiting rooms,
6 with bags perched in their laps like big tame birds
7 too worn to flap away. Within, the wives slowly undress,
8 put on the thin white robes, consult, come out
9 and wake the husbands dreaming openmouthed.
10 And when they both rise up
11 to take their constitutional,
12 walk up and down the block, her arms are free as air,
13 his right hand dangles down.
14 So I, desiring to shed this skin
15 for some light silken one,
16 will tell my husband, "Here, hold this,"
17 and watch him amble off into the mall among the shining
18 cans of motor oil, my leather bag
19 slung over his massive shoulder bone,
20 so prettily slender-waisted, so forgiving of the ways
21 we hold each other down, that watching him
22 I see how men love women, and women men,
23 and how the burden of the other comes to be
24 light as a feather blown, more quickly vanishing.
[from The Fire Music (1986): University of Pittsburgh Press]
Copyright © 1986, Liz Rosenberg.
Reproduced for personal use only: do not circulate.