Why does my wife not read my verse?
She’s surely not averse
to phrase and lines she reads at work,
her daily dose of prose that lurks
on paper and email I’ve heard her curse.
Poetry, you scheming rat,
you promised you’d deliver
a feast-seducing habitat,
a song to make her quiver,
not a sour look, nor petty spat.
Oh, why does she not sneak a peek
to see what I have written
in Moleskine notebook fit to tweak?
At least she’d know what has me smitten
the day I dared to plumb the deep.
There’s much more depth in me
than fake illiteracy.
I’m a minor chord, a malady.
I’m a scribe in search of melody,
a cloud of nature’s ancestry.
May she not pass like a Pharisee
From Bath to Cork with baby Grace 