Portrait d’un Homme
Written in response to Pound’s “Portrait d’une Femme”
Forget the water and wind. Forget the taste of salt-rimmed lips.
It’s been years since our time in the lighthouse,
Our time watching ship lights shimmer and vanish,
A collection of manageable losses,
People unmet, lessons unlearned, cargo-hold treasures kept secret.
I consider you again on my loneliest days.
How sad that there are so few photographs.
But this was your preference, always turning away at the last second.
You never wanted to be dull, to be ordinary.
You dreaded any perception of average.
But we knew each of your fine qualities was mirrored
By something less fine, some dollar-store trait, plastic already cracked.
And now what? Are you revealed yet as less than mysterious?
There’s still some interest, I’d guess, from the uninitiated –
The interns, the undergrads, who come close to revel, gaining
Advice, graciously given, or praise, sprinkled from a teaspoon.
Are you still embellishing your stories with bigger fish, with
Taller mountains, with women who were cruel or insane or both?
Your lighthouse beam doesn’t warn them off after all,
It never served its purpose, but rather
Pulled them in and drowned them, handsome siren.
It’s old work and not without its hazards, right?
The occasional scrapes with coral and shark, the bleary stings of jellies.
But those just add to your cargo of stories and now
With all this flotsam and jetsam clinging to your body,
With the long strands of seaweed and the tangled netting
You still spend time each day at the mirror – glasses on, glasses off--
Wondering which is more flattering. With? Without? Both!
Depending on angle and mood and light. Oh sweetness,
The lighthouse beam never fell on you,
Yet there is your long shadow, across the slanted floor.
Gillian Wegener has had poetry published Spillway, Packinghouse Review, Sow’s Ear, and Wherewithal. Her chapbook Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and her first full-length collection of poetry, The Opposite of Clairvoyance was published in 2008 by Sixteen Rivers Press. She hosts the monthly 2nd Tuesday Reading Series in downtown Modesto, is founding president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and has served since 2012 as the poet laureate for the City of Modesto.
Written in response to Pound’s “Portrait d’une Femme”
Forget the water and wind. Forget the taste of salt-rimmed lips.
It’s been years since our time in the lighthouse,
Our time watching ship lights shimmer and vanish,
A collection of manageable losses,
People unmet, lessons unlearned, cargo-hold treasures kept secret.
I consider you again on my loneliest days.
How sad that there are so few photographs.
But this was your preference, always turning away at the last second.
You never wanted to be dull, to be ordinary.
You dreaded any perception of average.
But we knew each of your fine qualities was mirrored
By something less fine, some dollar-store trait, plastic already cracked.
And now what? Are you revealed yet as less than mysterious?
There’s still some interest, I’d guess, from the uninitiated –
The interns, the undergrads, who come close to revel, gaining
Advice, graciously given, or praise, sprinkled from a teaspoon.
Are you still embellishing your stories with bigger fish, with
Taller mountains, with women who were cruel or insane or both?
Your lighthouse beam doesn’t warn them off after all,
It never served its purpose, but rather
Pulled them in and drowned them, handsome siren.
It’s old work and not without its hazards, right?
The occasional scrapes with coral and shark, the bleary stings of jellies.
But those just add to your cargo of stories and now
With all this flotsam and jetsam clinging to your body,
With the long strands of seaweed and the tangled netting
You still spend time each day at the mirror – glasses on, glasses off--
Wondering which is more flattering. With? Without? Both!
Depending on angle and mood and light. Oh sweetness,
The lighthouse beam never fell on you,
Yet there is your long shadow, across the slanted floor.
Gillian Wegener has had poetry published Spillway, Packinghouse Review, Sow’s Ear, and Wherewithal. Her chapbook Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and her first full-length collection of poetry, The Opposite of Clairvoyance was published in 2008 by Sixteen Rivers Press. She hosts the monthly 2nd Tuesday Reading Series in downtown Modesto, is founding president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and has served since 2012 as the poet laureate for the City of Modesto.