Apple Fritter and a Single Rose

After 30 years together, Carol tells me late one evening in the manner of a quiet wife that I have yet to write a poem about her, something she will never understand in light of all those other poems she says I wrote about those other women before she drove north. And so I tell her once again I wrote those other poems about no women I ever knew the way I now know her even if I saw them once or twice for dinner, maybe, and a little vodka over lime and ice. Near midnight, though, she says again in the manner of a quiet wife it’s been thirty years and still no poem. When morning comes I motor off to town to buy a paper and a poem for Carol but find instead undulating in a big glass case an apple fritter, tanned and glistening, lying there just waiting. So I buy the lovely fritter and a single long-stem rose orphaned near the register, roaring red, and still at full attention. I bring them home but find Carol still asleep and so I put the fritter on the breadboard and the rose right next to it, at the proper angle. When she wakes I hope the fritter and the rose will buy me time until somewhere in the attic of my mind I find a poem that says more about us than this apple fritter, tanned and glistening, lying there just waiting, and a single long-stem rose, roaring red, and still at full attention. Donal Mahoney