and I call again. “Hello? Hello, is this
the number
to which I am speaking?”
Hello, yourself, again. I am reading a poem
by James Schuyler, and he mentions you. But
what were you doing out on the Atlantic alone
on a weekday, sails billowing?
Mooring after sixty years,
you flutter about in your space
like I love the safety of mine,
and neither one of us
in our isolated states
needs foreign policy.
Yet sometimes in the middle of the night
I get as lonely as the moon
above Walnut Crossings,
looking at would-be lovers,
wondering about their secret
negotiations. After these few years,
I have to tell you
what I have never told another man.
Your face in the dark
inches from mine
below that bewitching August
moon—oh how its light glistenen
on the pavement where we stood—
was the only man’s face
that in darkness never frightened me.
− Marianne Trale
Marianne Trale is a tenured professor of English at CCAC Boyce Campus who earned an MFA in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Her poetry has appeared in Green Mountain Review, Thirteen, Pennsylvania Review, After Image and other journals. She lives in Monroeville. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on 90.5 FM.
