A Knight’s Refusal
Or: Fear of Intimacy, 13th Century

I assure you, a hero knows these things instinctively:
you looked at me with such expectation, I knew instantly
I would fail you at once and endlessly, yet you want experience.
tandem horseback riding, moonlight trysts as I recite hence
concerning your impeccable beauty, your thousand charms endless.
Gentle Lady, with reason I fear: you’ll change after, then the mess!
You’ll darken and harden when love wanes later. It’s inevitable:
sunset vistas and glade romps can’t last long, so why start to cull
something amorous when no passion ever holds forever?
I can’t abide being the man who turns that tender cheek bitter.
Whatever splendors your imagination evokes, I cannot have you
with me on perilous missions. Risk well-being? I won’t have you
pitted against the jaws of a dragon or a bandit’s lascivious grin.
Oh Besotted Beauty: a knight can’t have a constant companion!
No, it’s not you! It’s me: I’m not the man you so ardently dream,
though admittedly, I cut a fine figure en guard by a babbling stream,
but your tresses so exceedingly fair that a man could be strangled
willingly in your curls’ revelry. To have you, brave men wrangle
beasts for your body unmarred and milky white of skin and smile,
but Gentle Lady, I promised myself to the Order of Knights, undefiled.
I took my Oath of Honor. My sole job: saving all damsels in danger,
starting with you from yourself. I implore you, don’t think longer
you’ve been spurned. You deserve devotion as sun to moon.
A nine-to-five guildsman will make you a fine husband come June,
cherishing his stability along with the dram of ale you supply
so sweetly for him nightly. Assuredly John the furrier has nigh
beheld you with longing. I never speak out of mere convenience.
Can’t you see: the pleasure of my bower for us just wasn’t meant.
I’m a roamer through wild forests, a jouster in silver armor,
there’s always one more lady’s arms, often a poor farmer’s daughter,
entwining me in the rescuing. Now, would you really rather mope
away in the castle, pining for my returning? Where is the hope
in that situation? Assuredly, my Darling,
I’m doing you a favor in not vowing.

**

Jenny Wrens

“The George Barrell Emerson School, Boston c. 1850. Although higher education for women initially met with some resistance, female seminarians like this one were started in the 1820s and 1830s and taught women mathematics, physics, and history, as well as music, art, and the social graces.” -photo caption

Wren birds in bustles and corsets
bound, hair upswept in buns
clasped with plain pins and clips.
Without jewel, without adornment,
calico and quiet, downcast
over books, elbows bent
row-upon-row, row-upon-row,
orderly the buttoned-up prim beauties
always avert the taskmaster’s gaze.
See Teacher’s broadcloth jacket,
his tanned leather lace-up shoes, lackluster
footprints the custodian buffs after hours.
Before them, he is stern Socratic method,
he is question for question, he is instruction,
he’s set them to booklets of sum after sum.
There will be Bible verses from II Corinthians,
orations, memorization of Byron and Shelley,
Copernicus, Romulus, and hemming of skirts.
Desk to desk pushed to dark stained log walls,
soot from the woodstove all along the back,
bars of sunlight barely slipping through slit shades.
After luncheon, Julia will play Mozart on the spinet,
Prudence will demonstrate calling card calligraphy,
Lydia and Alice will figure sketch woodland rabbits.
They, the crinoline and crepe scholars,
they, the career daughters—blush and hush,
fit to flutter and flit away again home.

**

The Sparkling Sweet

Enjoy Ice-Cold Coca-Cola!
Cherry red metallic machine
outside Rusty’s Auto Repair.
Our sticky summer fingers,
nickel and diming it
until the tall glass bottle
burned the palm with chill
and expectancy, sparkling sweet,
slipped down to flip-flopped feet
tapping gravel chips
as the claw-jaw’s opener bit
the cap ‘til the top popped off.
Then glug-glug-glug good,
burps and banana seat biking,
balancing bottle and handlebars—
another June jaunt in short shorts
back to Grandma’s front porch
in a fizzy daze of sun.

**

Imprint

I’ve started this poem to you
five times already and every time,
before you’re in it, your eyes
frightened brown sparrows
taking wing.
What can I write of you
that would be equally true
outside shadow and memory?
Even now, I’m trying
to overcome the immensity,
to speak of all that you are:
willow outside my window,
star fire hushed.
I admit: even now
I’m covering my tracks,
I’m slipping back
behind swathe
of lush forest fronds,
subdued, green
glades I imagine
once were meant
to walk us, pale and calm
together.
Sadnesses linger yet
we speak not of them;
courage waits as wedding bands
boxed, put away
in an antique drawer,
both were my grandmother’s
happiness. O, once again
you’re not the central figure
of this poem I mean to dedicate
on tiptoe, winds whipping my back,
after a frost-filled wander, your door—
closed, lights left on, you’re still
not there. To the glass, I press
my mitten of red, no imprint.

**

Yonder

Never quite here, a hoot and a holler assured there,
that’s what’s best about it. I reckon
there’s slight contention about its final destination–
somewhere beyond the creeks and mill towns,
the mountain and hill towns of the Shenandoah,
somewhere close the Carolina coast
or all along the mighty Mississip
is as good a guess as we’ve got.
Guaranteed, blue-clear are the skies
surrounding this land of ever-tomorrows
where no one’s too big for his britches,
where we congregate, where we wave
to passing neighbors from back porch steps.
Backwoods bubbas and red-dirt farmers,
idealists of one stripe or another
once scampered the perimeter of this frolicsome
frontier, making cozy lodgings, a place to kick back,
fire-smoke some good eats, almost always barbequed.
Ever bidding, one footfall in front of another,
we amble, we stumble a piece then land—
milk and honey rich with a little back-breaking work,
with a little good old elbow grease, we land
like so many stray cats, all paws down after
the fall. Hope enough in that branching y,
that long-drawn o for dilly-dallying, for essaying
and sallying, for do-se-do and wandering. Rustle up
and get along, we get along on into that pristine pastel
sunset, heads-up and near-to catching the coattails
of prosperity—we ride, when we ride, around-about
and away into near-come glory, Mornin’ Glory.

**

A Simple Desultory Praise Poem

Let us now give praise
for misunderstandings,
spats and verbal stumblings,
for haltings and stoppage,
for daily breakage.
Let us now give praise
for distance, for silence
for d.o.a. and no reply,
for when you know better
you do better,
for further to fly.
Let us now give praise
for what’s yours is yours,
what’s mine is mine,
for rifts and schisms,
for agreeing to disagree,
for never seeing each other
again, for finally the end.