Edited and Introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate
In today’s column, Dawn Potter of Harmony explores the theme of love in the long marriage.
After Twenty Years
by Dawn PotterIt is possible
that no husband really loves his wife.Too easy it is to mistake
their scheduled arrivals and departures, their constancy,
for something greater than the dim outcroppings
of loneliness.When, entrapped again
in the fervent throes of habit,
we cry, “Do you love me?”
they answer yes.Their manners
are faultless, restrained.
They sleep deeply,
and, in the morning, scraping ashes from the stove,only rarely do they forget to speak.
Dawn Potter directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. She is the author or editor of seven books of prose and poetry. Her new collection, Same Old Story, is a judge’s nominee for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2014 Dawn Potter. Reprinted from Same Old Story, Cavankerry Press, 2014, by permission of Dawn Potter.
Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Special Consultant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 207-228-8263. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.
