©2016 by Jack A. Urquhart

I’m through talking to you,
she said, in her best aggrieved
spousal tone—this before launching
a litany of worst-case marital woes.
Quite a list it was, and accurate;
something about ambivalent husbands
making emotionally fragile wives.
Meanwhile, outside the kitchen window,
a blizzard of plum blossoms settling
into pink petal snow drifts
on the Spring carpeted earth.
Which aroused precipitous notions
of marriage as a seasonal feast:
Spring’s timorous first candied kiss
flaring to Summer’s hot-chili heat,
a can’t-get-enough-of-you stew
that’s breathtakingly delicious—
until autumn’s befalling,
and the first wintering frost.
Just so my simple-minded epiphany
collided with my wife’s intermission.
I don’t know why I keep trying,
she said, lapsing toward lingering silence.
But that was but one of many bare-faced lies,
if surely the dearest ever told—
just enough for a few more seasons.
But all this was many moons ago;
and so, perhaps convenient fiction—
the last words between wishful
and thinking.
‘Though that surely belies
the simple truth.