Primroses

       ...and so it is
                  Damien Rice


I still keep that photo you snapped.
Eyes just past childlike; china masked by steel.
The edge of one breast peeks from my half-
zippered jumpsuit. Primroses cluster
beneath the far rail..

Men hustled me then, 
hard as street-side gamblers 
when the dice were red hot, but
I chose you--you with the Bob Dylan eyes,
wraith-thin legs, white cotton socks 
peeking furtively from beneath
your creased jeans. Gold ring,
third finger down.

You loved us both.
You never said it, but I knew.

That day. So heady with sunshine,
bright colored birds swooping down 
to the grass for plump lazy worms.
That day, you fell from your straight arrow
ways and finally bedded me.

I settled for a man from Peoria.
Legs thick as an oxen's.
We lasted eight years.

The birds are slower these days.
Too many worms get away,
The sun swells like a heartbeat. 
Sweat runs down my back.
I plant extra primroses along my porch rail,
sometimes imagine a westerly wind rising
to carry their scent back to you.

Last month your name lept from a magazine.
Some obscure article about spiders.
I wrote you.

Your hair has gone gray, you write back.
Work still goes well. Your jeans don't fit, anymore.
You enclose a photo of your grown daughter.
Your eyes stare at me from her face.

'I never forgot you', you add, 'but isn't that
how life goes??'



Pris Campbell
©2005

Published in The Dead Mule, Spring Issue 2007


Photograph from archives


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