Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Poetry Recital

In this artist's recreation, we seem to be speaking at the same time.
This is inaccurate.  However, it is true that we commenced both
poems with an ornate majuscule letter.
Nancy and I have a delightful relationship, and often I blog about it, but I don't tell everything.  Sorry, but some of our delights are just a little too delightful to share.  Nancy has given me specific instructions, "Don't blog about that."  What "that" is I will leave to your vivid imagination, but suffice to say, no matter how vivid, your imagination is not nearly vivid enough.

However, I believe I can safely blog about this.

Nancy and I have begun reciting poetry to one another.

When I say "begun," I mean we've done this precisely one time.  The deal was last week we each selected a poem to memorize from a book of sonnets of Edna St Vincent Millay, and on Sunday we sat down and recited for each other.  This week, we've thrown the category open to any poem from an anthology of best-loved poetry.

If you think it would feel a little weird sitting in front of someone and reciting poetry at her, you're right.  But it was also delightful.  And equally delightful to hear her recite for me.  Sunday when Nancy said, "Do you want to recite our poems now?" I had to go into another room and run over mine a few times.  Even so, I stumbled in my recitation and had to start over.  But Nancy didn't mind.

Last week was a hard week.  In addition to our usual monstrously busy round of daily stuff we'd gone down to see Nancy's parents.  Nancy's mother, you may know, has Alzheimer's.  She has become difficult and uncooperative.  Nancy took her on an outing, and mamma was unhappy the whole time.  This made Nancy unhappy as well.

When we got home, Nancy was suffering from a mixture of every unpleasant emotion you can name and a few you can't: anger, resentment, pity, self-pity, guilt, frustration.  Did I leave any out? 

Oh, right.  Fatigue.

A few minutes of poetry recital did not make the world go away, but it was a respite nonetheless.

I am no fool.  I know reciting poetry smacks of the sort of thing you do once or twice and then let fall by the wayside because there's the daily bread to get and yoga class and weddings and parents and cats, dogs, chickens, and so forth.  But I don't care.  If we only did it once, and never again, my life would still be one poem the better.  Two poems the better.  I heard Nancy's as well as recited my own.

As of this writing, I have not picked out my next poem, but I promise to you I will.  I'll memorize it too, and recite it for Nancy.

My life can stand the improvement of at least one more poem.