My Love of Loon Lake

Hers was never an old story.
She was a navy man’s daughter.
His story was in her dance
crossing a room like a ship’s deck.

She was his first child to worry
her mother, who went to sea
on shore. Her mother shipwrecked
like me before we met by chance,
only because I married her daughter.

Born to write with my left
I was changed to my right.
She had cleaned up and read
all the Homer there was to tame,
while I went missing all the time.

To this day, I do not know why
I got drunk nightly.
I failed to make our lives rhyme.
Relentlessly, I went out of my head.

Every man kills his beloved,
some Delphic Oracle said
before anyone could read Greek
or play hide-and-seek
when the cops came around.

I hoped she would follow me south,
but she moved to Loon Lake,
where once she had lost her ring,
before I discovered I could sing.

She lived in her father’s cabin.
Her mother stayed home.
She wished to live alone,
her mother wanted to mourn.

Neither one of us would ever come.
Even her eyes had said, No,
I loved you so much then I know
I will never again be your wife,
not ever, no more, not in this life.


(24 May, 5 June 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander