Poetry by Lana Hechtman Ayers
Today there has been so much talk of romance,
so much so, that I want to run into the frozen
streets and join myself to the icicle hung
streetlamps with my tongue, Valentine
kissing the Hallmark holiday into hypothermia.
But isn’t love something else, a dog that drops
her bone at your feet as tears plop down your cheeks,
a man on the subway who offers his seat to the young
woman who looks a hundred months pregnant
ready to pop like a 4th of July firework?
Or maybe its my ex whose been a friend all these years,
calls once a decade or so to say, I remember
how agile you are, though he has no idea how I argue
with my aching body now about what it puts me through
like a typewriter whose keys only go halfway to the page?
And then there’s my husband,
who hauls out the blender that groans
like a lawn mower to make me fresh hemp milk
three times a week, though I could do it myself
and the jar has to be washed by hand
and he has a million other more important things
on his agenda, but there he is, scooping
and measuring and whirring
like a maestro on a Steinway, creating what I need
out of the raw materials of clean water and seeds.
That’s how love grows best, I think, how it proceeds
almost unseen in the everyday like mighty Atlantic
roaring away, always there, salt spray and spume
akin to the drooling kisses of a dear grandmother who
is always happy to see you, arms open wider than sky.
Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print as managing editor for three small presses. She lives in Oregon on unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people with her beloved husband and fur babies. On clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.
