Three Poems by Kathryn Guelcher: Smoke without Fire, Bird Sanctuary, August 24th

Three Poems
by Kathryn Guelcher

Smoke without Fire

My reasons for avoiding tattoos and affairs overlap,
and though I know no such scientific correlation,
I suspect affairs occur slightly more amongst the tattooed.
It is not to say that both don’t appeal to me
in some mod feminist rogue romantic way
--not that I face the dilemma often.
                        And I like Stephen Dunn’s words
about the importance of a secret life.
It's not about maturity, though I’d like to think so.
Or integrity. Or that my body is a temple—
unless it is one erected to honor robust red wines.
There is a level of permanence, and they are
difficult to cover, I understand. After the first one,
another, presumably, isn’t far off.
                         What then?
Of course, my wild love of and devotion to my spouse
explains much of my restraint. I fall half in love
with half of everyone and all in love with any
who balance humor, intelligence, and sensitivity
with just enough confidence tempered by self-deprecation
combined with a tendency to hold strong opinions
with a willingness to tell me I am wrong
—well, sometimes. Yes, that makes me love you.
The arrangement of your features
-- your gender, age, body type—matter less.
I will wonder what sleeping with you would be like.
Maybe I've refrained
from fear of cliché. If it seems I might be an inked secret lover,
at least I am, for once, mysterious-- if just
in my seeming lack of class. Gross, my husband will say
of all this, withholding that he gets it. When our children’s age
exposes me for my humanity, I'd prefer
to keep their evidence less concrete. But.
If they ask…
                      I suppose I will admit
that I certainly did consider
                    sleeping with you.

Bird Sanctuary

I'd like to think
that on my best days,
I am less
this common brown finch
and more
the Red-Winged Blackbird.
Certainly not the Cardinal
whose brilliance and meanness
are so well-documented.
Isn't that always the pairing?
But there, perched,
dressed mostly in black,
the sleek sophistication
goes largely unnoticed
among the woodpecker
varieties with their
downy speckles
and crimson bursts,
among the possum's
casual seed-eating--
her marsupial pocket
alone for continents.
A Cedar Waxwing
flutters in, alights.
No, it's not until the
blackbird leaves that
the flash of color
draws one to it
inspiring intrigue
about the mysterious
complexity of the
simple,
only in its absence.
How beautiful,
that kind of subdued cool.
How modest, too.

August 24th

Twenty years ago this day
the weather was beautiful.
I remember.
We went to the mall
for sunglasses.

I resisted sharing with the girl at the kiosk
who took no special note of us,
that our dad died today,
and didn't it seem strange to her
that everything almost seemed
normal?

I mean, miraculously, the mall still existed
and was open for us.
It felt like a secret I should not keep,
but did.
He was old to have teenagers,
but young to be dead, it seemed.

Nineteen months before,
the illness began.
Four years and eight months before,
he gave me a notebook
and suggested I write.

And the writing gives back more than I put in,
as it was with him and me.
In filled yellowing pages
and creamy blank ones, he continues
as ideas I can't craft or set sail
with memory alone.

In the past two years, Kathryn Guelcher’s work has appeared in Memoir Journal, Orange Room Review, Yourdailypoem.com, and Fat City Review among others. It has also been heard on George Bilgere’s radio show, Wordplay. She teaches high school English in the suburbs of Chicago and laughs and lives with her three young children and her husband (who does not select the first poem here as his favorite).

Copyright 2014, © Kathryn Guelcher. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.