Saturday Poem

Thank Heavens for Shakespeare

I am always in and out of love
with my husband. Tonight—out.

Out of love and instead, in a cranky mood:
That sweatshirt he’s wearing, and his hair!

Maybe Titania and Oberon were out of love and needed an excellent fight.
Of course, here I am in my own drab grey sweatshirt, no sleeping beauty

amid wood thyme and nodding oxlips.
Where is my night full of misguided agents—

to light my eyes on fire with a love gone wrong—some strange fellow
(who, shhhh, is actually my husband now in full hunk-mode) to call me
angel.

And we find our way through a wood full of word play and misunder-
standings
to a magical morning where the sun is tender and my husband is new and
yet

the same to me again, and my own skin radiant, my hair long and shiny.
Love undeniable.
Oh, Husband of the Ill-Fitting Sweatshirt! Let me pour you a glass of this
most

mysterious wine I’ve found hidden in a dusty cupboard.
Let us go outside and wander in our familiar backyard, barefoot.

Let us recognize that even those luminous stars
must sometimes feel stuck in their very own heaven.

by Carol Berg
from
Decomp Magazine