after the retreat

the writers' retreat at ghost ranch was wonderful! many talented women writers in poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. and the desert is so dramatic with reds and browns and soft sun in the evening. a week of poetic bliss before the semester started today.

but i love the classroom and all my students. in the fall i teach an intro to poetry class that's a treat, and i can tell from the student discussion today of how poetry differs from prose that this class is going to be great.

if i had a school poem i'd post it. i don't, though i have a poem that mentions school.


Blue

Judith drives a Peugeot
into my life of cheap jobs.

She tenders marriage of possibility
speaks of Greece and romance
the Caribbean and love

offers to share her house
built practicing the law.

Her proposal answers years
of my living on the edge.

I put on a wife’s smock.
Judith would not see it the way a man does
in his own reflection.

She is not a renegade
would not break our vow
to shelter and warm each other.

Judith thumbs through cases of alimony
buries herself in briefs
hands me a list of honey-dos
before turning in.

She ransacks my closet
throws out clothes she doesn’t like
screams at me when I mention school.
I forget to pick up her laundry
she storms out and slams the door.

Like a nightingale who sings in darkness
I write till I’m weary
of a partner who fucks me blue.