Monday, September 05, 2022

1102. For Angela - Margaret Menges

 Selected from: A Book Of Luminous Things, 

  Edited by Czeslaw Milosz


Angela’s coming for dinner, he said and

he bought the card with flowers and red hearts

flashing in circles.

He set the card under the rose light

on the dining room table,

next to the bills and the junk mail

piled there in the daily hubbub

which we promptly cleared away 

             because

Angela, Angela’s coming, he said

and it made me laugh to remember

and I thought it’d be swell to have a theme,

like a national holiday for young love, so

we had Angel-hair pasta and Angel food cake,

white and full of air, whipped cream

and strawberries redder than roses and

blood and fairy-tale apples

Angela, Angela. . . she arrived like the

Fourth of July and sat at the 

end of the table, staring into

the blue eyes of the boy I’ve known forever.

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