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A Subtle Proposal


12.02.17 Posted in today's words by

Nicole Yurcaba’s most recent poem to appear here was “Since My Cousin’s Death” (November 2017)

A Subtle Proposal
for my husband, Dwayne
By Nicole Yurcaba

July, and thin ring-neck snakes
slinked through high dry
grasses brushing waving cattails.

The heat, subtle and lazy,
rippled like feeding sunfish
tapping the pond’s surface,

and the brown worm squirmed,
bristles gripping my finger
when the hook plunged,

piercing the worm’s rounded side,
until the creature contracted around
that silver band—amethyst-lined,

diamond-accented—my new decoration;
a Sunday gift you placed in my hand
as we trekked the puddle-littered,

tire-tracked logging road, that road
we walked on weekend evenings,
pole-and-tacklebox armed.

I wasn’t afraid of the worm or the hook;
I knew you watched from your place beside me,
seeing if I flinched when the worm touched the ring;

I didn’t fear a sunfish’s barbs in my palm,
or a catfish’s tail whack as I wrestled
to remove the hook from its whiskered face.

What I feared, sort of, were the words
you’d said when you slipped the ring into my hand:
Don’t lose that ring. Wait, you lose everything
just like you lost my bass lure last night.



One Response to “A Subtle Proposal”

  1. Hiram Larew says:

    Bass lures and all….

    Don’t ever lose your gifts, Nicole,
    Hiram

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