Stan Galloway’s poem I Smell Onions appeared here at New Years as the first place winner in the today’s words division of the First-Ever vox poetica Poetry Contest. This is another love poem, but from a very different standpoint.
Reverie
By Stan Galloway
After your shower,
I see you from the doorway
sitting at the bed edge,
towel puddled at your feet.
You are motionless,
one foot pulled up beside you,
where you had been looking at your toenails,
one arm out the other way for balance,
a kind of sculpted Galatea
rising from a marble bed,
enfleshed,
alive,
absorbed.
Your toes are now forgotten
as you look wide at nothing,
at a space outside the room,
inside yourself,
captured by the muse,
a memory,
a random coupling of incongruous thoughts.
I wonder if you think of me
but dare not enter
knowing how a bubble,
poem,
or thought
can burst to soapfilm
at the slightest prick.
Later when I ask,
you say you don’t remember.
You paint a pretty picture and then left us to assume our own ending. Mine was still romantic.
What if she really doesn’t remember? Sometimes we don’t get answers we’d like to hear. I really like that he cares enough to wonder and to watch – the poem belongs to him and it’s all about intimacy and his love.
Jeanette,you read the poem so well (both of you). Thank you for seeing the care he shows; I thought that might be too subtle, at least for those who get caught up in the visual aspect of the poem. I wanted it to be an “art” poem, but it is still very much a poem about relationships.