Joanna Gilman Hyde

My time in bed is

My time alone listening:

French music, wind, birds

What does my house contain?

Walls plastered with art

mine and my friends

5 cats

my mother’s furniture

what’s left of it

The makings of a life anew

minus one second husband

and out every window

views of the great

Atlantic

Eye eat my Greek salad

sitting upon the tomato–coloured couch

with a giant bowl under my chin

like a shelf

Eye am by myself

and my step-mother died today

in California–her last word to me was “fascinating “

and my mother died

28 years ago

here in Nova Scotia–her last word was “remember”

and my daughter called from Quebec

to ask how

do Eye feel

Written March 15, 2021

Eye am housed

in a high house of odd design

where from my top view

Eye can watch heavenly clouds

gleaming above the ocean

Eye am the proverbial princess

Girl Who Has Everything

except a boyfriend

or should that be “Prince”

Where is my independence?

This afternoon I sat

again on The Tomato–coloured Couch

this time to read

my collection of poems

written from It

going back seven years or more

and how have I matured?

The marriage I mentioned is over

The cats we had are still here

minus one

and what of my frame of mind?

Black Jesus and The Silver Christ

have recessed

and here I sit again

listening to the French radio station

alone in my musings

unsure of my future.

Eye have been content

up in M(eye) Corner Room overlooking

The Atlantic, watching the weather

w/ the cats —

it was sunny minutes ago

but now a snow squall has moved in

I’ll go make some tea

“Astro, who was that man?”

Who was that man I met in the library

in Meteghan?

That man who took me

to Sip Cafe

and held my hand

saying he was 500 years old?

He smelled of wood smoke

like my son

and kissed my hairband

when I asked if he was married.

“Astro, who was that man?”

Who took me to Halifax

for Valentine’s Day

to eat chicken Spanakopita

to contemplate skating

when we said we were from Digby

incognito

I in my long white fake fur coat

and long red sparkly scarf

elaborate

he in his black Columbia

worn for the first time

a daughter’s gift

“Astro, who was that man?”

Who read my essay on Jealousy

and brushed my hair

and looked at me with reverence?

We walked the beach

when we got home

bundled up

and I darned his sock

and fixed the snags

in his Irish dark blue sweater

the colour of his eyes.

“Astro, who was he?”

Eye sit beside a cold grey sea

anchored by my cup of tea

Alone I am — but eye don’t care

for now my life is free

My brother never saw

the house I’m living in,

neither did my mother.

They both died

too early in my life

when I was with another

set of circumstance

calling me to strife —

First the father of my 3

rejected for the other

husband whom I no longer have

rejected for a lover

in my mind and in my heart

but he is gone through time

why bother to count those years

now my life is mine.

Instead of waking

to my former husband’s kissable head

I looked to a sky of gold and pink

and to the spruce of our first snow

this winter, and I reached

for my phone

to review the end

of Self Organizing Galaxy —

my painting of blue and purple

yellow and red

I watched my face

of 23 years

then got out of bed

to wash it now

and brush my hair —

my cat wants to be fed