HIS AND HERS HECHT

 Lovemaking we deferred for hours

  Still locked in an embrace, but vexed;

  No supple soporific——ours

  A robust explication de texte.

  You read and re-read “The Transparent Man,”

  An invalid’s rattling after opaque death——

  For you the battling of Flaubert’s St. Julian,

  Almost an epilogue to bated breath.

  “Please don’t be angry!” I repeated——

  “But her diction’s lacking authenticity.”

  “I’m not angry, I’m just heated” you

  Insisted——“She finds redemption in the trees!”

  Your vast immortal globe of thought above

  Abandoned, you returned, and we made love.

                        G. A. Fischer

                    THE SECRETS WEDDING

                                                        After "A Wedding" by Mac Hammond

            Given in paradox—man longs to be a woman's first

            (that long impossible); a woman wants, she yearns, she works

            to be her lover's last—the chupah was a chutzpah and

            a miracle.  (Anyway, these two would never take a vow.)

            No voile veil cascades, the bride's draped borrowed satin

            vintage over fresh Lou Frenchlace underwear.  She carries

            jaundicing gardenias, handling an olfactory fireworks

            of flowers.  (The hall was free, the food home-cooked.)

            The cautious groom's in street clothes brooking no

            annoyance, sports no small abutting boutonniere.

            She notices him thinking, I don't want more

            misery; he knows she's feeling, I don't

            want to lose him, anymore.  Come to disdain passe

            symbolic acts, their guests are gossiping, dub all the couple's

            lurid years of confidence. 

                                                             At home under indecipherable

            stars, after his first or her last duplicitous 'good night' every

            time they kiss and kiss not quite this aptly ever before.

                                            G. A. Fischer 

                                            1990 and 1996

 

Sammy Snow, Gail, and Irving in North Truro, Cape Cod, July 2000

            (John Snow)