To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.
Please enjoy today’s selection: “The Wider Rim” by Laura Grace Weldon, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Love Poems:
The Wider Rim
After dinner she untied her apron,
then she and my father danced
across scuffed linoleum
between table, sink, and stove.
Dressing for church meetings
and neighborhood parties my mother
wore a girdle, clip-on earrings, polyester dress.
My father wore the width of tie
and length of sideburns other men wore.
Bridge club meant sitting
at vinyl-covered card tables,
no conversation allowed during a hand.
Cups clinked against saucers, forks tapped on plates
almost as silently, afterwards.
As their days now slide
toward the funnel’s neck,
I see the wider rim.
My father tells my mother to hang on,
put your right foot here,
slide the walker,
put your other foot there.
Head hunched, she stops, her eyes
send a letter only he deciphers.
They traverse a slow path
chair to bathroom, bathroom to chair,
shuffling in sync. He says,
See, now you’re dancing Honey.
