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Back home
this woman I left alone
was the most beautiful around.
She walked like a sailor
because her father had been
a navy man. She was born
after the war, and that is all
you need to know,
she was so full of life
she did what she loved
if there was a choice,
at least she thought she loved
what she seemed to have to do . . .
Her father was dying when she left
and stayed away and tended to him
because her mother needed her,
she thought.
Now when I think
to recall what loving her was like
I usually find myself
listening to Johnny Cash
singing with Bob Dylan,
a record album that was new
when we began to love.
We came home,
where I lived,
and put it on the record player
and went to bed
listening to “North Country Girl”
and “Lay across my big brass bed”
and loved until we slept
and woke as happy as I would
ever be.

(31 October 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander