This poem is dedicated to my wife of 43 years:  Pearl Korolenko

A POETS LOVE POEM

You began each observation with commonplace disclosures

Yet moved on from thinking of the oaks as bold and solid

To the subtleties what they might feel

When Fall began to rapier their leaves

 And winter sworded off their small branches

Which seemed so formidable in later spring…

You always favored the runt in every litter,

However unappealing to one’s eyes,

With its sickened whimpering, teetering at the edge of death

And a splotchy coat of uncoordinated colors;

Where something you saw as beautiful had no equilibrium

While its muscosed eyes seemed unable to see forms

Of anything beyond light and dark…

When we struggled through the deepest snow,

Just to make it home,

You told me that our fireplace would never look or feel as good

As we imagined it with freezing feet;

Struggling to gain a footing in a foot or two of snow..

You reminded me that I often missed the obvious

Which made my similes and metaphors weaker in the end,

You never wrote a poem,

Yet when I truly listened

You were always those important things

I forgot to buy at any store.

Ken Siegelman

Brooklyn Poet Laureate, September, 2008