Thursday, October 19, 2023

Poem for Wednesday and Downtown Park

Russian Ending
By Jerry Williams

As in some demented romantic comedy,
my wife and I divided the apartment in half.

She took the living room and I took the bedroom.
Bivouacked and bleeding, we waited for the lawyer

to finish the stipulation so we could sign
the pages and crawl away forever.

I lived in her midst like an alien species.
The exclusion zone sizzled like wet lightning

when I whispered to outsiders on the house phone.
Then came the morning of my departure:

I awoke in civil twilight with my wife standing
over me, looking down into my pallid face.

For half a second, I thought she might strike me,
but she grasped my hand and squeezed it goodbye,

an astonishing tenderness glistening in her eyes,
one final gift in all that pain and murderous détente,

all that wailing and mortification of the flesh.
On the way to the gallows of divorce,

she held a merciful cup of clemency to my lips,
and I drank deeply, I drank so deeply

that I forgot what I’d done to deserve her.

-------- 

My Wednesday was a lot like my Tuesday, with less screaming because I'm resigned to the situation and also we had gorgeous nearly-70-degree sunny weather. I talked to two of my high school friends in the morning -- mostly about our pets, who kept interrupting -- then I watched two episodes of Good Omens with Kristen in the afternoon before we walked to the beach and the park. 

The Astros-Rangers game did not go the way I wanted, and I'm bummed for Max Scherzer, but it's one game. We missed the end for Elton John Night on The Masked Singer (Billie Jean King!) followed by Quantum Leap (the cases this season seem so inconsequential) and now more Suits (which I don't know why it took us so long to watch). Some views of fall coming to Green Lake last weekend: 

2023-10-15 15.11.25A

2023-10-15 14.43.47

2023-10-15 14.57.51

2023-10-15 16.14.33

2023-10-15 14.56.30

2023-10-15 14.52.55

2023-10-15 16.16.14A

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