melissaahowells - Fisherman's Woman's Lament

the gunshot wound
that was your heart
in its poultice of
cayenne pepper

and that lolli-pop
of cherry fentanyl
couldn't make
your deepest wound
mend better

the waders to your
water-logged love
hang on the drooping clothesline

see how they
wind-walk
and skip away
dancing in the blowing wind
as it gathers his footsteps
fluttering away higher and higher

He was your fisherman
a fisher of hearts
with a hook to snag you
and give you the finest pleasures

he used no ordinary fly wheel
but the spinning kind
light-weight
an expert troller
in your wilder notions
the oceans and the rivers

oh the things you thought you did
the things we all do
so that we may breathe and love
and feel the love of others

my efforts
didn't make a creel
didn't make a net
didn't make a fishing lodge home
for my lover

love can be a bullet wound
love can be a far-off echo
love can be distant
as a man out on the river or the ocean

if love doesn't become a phantom
and abandon me
would I wear my widow's weeds
though we were never wed
and when he married himself
to Poseiden's Daughter

will he come back to me
dead in his knitted knotted gown
that telling Irish sweater

and not ever quite returned
will his ghost-lips
speak and sing to me
to simply haunt me?

Oh how the Salton Sea
is the whole wide world
the Temptress of all fishermen
yet
is the truest fisher of all
its wayward sons and daughters.

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LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM 2/21/2022 7:37 DIRECTLY TO THE PAGE
TIME AND DATE STAMPED AND ALSO FOR THIS POET MELISSA A. HOWELLS
AND ALSO FOR THIS LEGALLY COPYRIGHTED AND REGISTERED SITE TITLE:
MELOO STRAIGHT FROM HER TILT-A-WORLD (INDEED)