This Is Why I Loved You
by Ann Bogle
Your opal eyes
Your sea-blue eyes
Your sky-blue eyes
Your ice-blue eyes
Your gray-blue eyes, your periwinkles
Your hazel eyes
Your violet eyes
(almond-shaped and almost cubist)
Your indigo eyes
Your topaz eyes, your sunkissed lashes
Your turtle-sundae eyes.
I loved your black shiny hair
Your turquoise streaks
Your blond parade
(your hair that speaks)
Your red-sown hair
(cosseted in its own knot)
I loved my friends without sorting things first.
I loved your ringing in the ears
Your Rolling Rock
Your rough-hewn jaw
Your three-day beard
Your mercury
Your staggering toward me
in your navy mugger's cap
in a werewolf dementia
(I loved you and would have shown it to the moon)
I loved your nifty pronouncements
that drifted like seagulls over the pay lot.
And later, your country squire's avant garde
Your full-grown beard
Your handsome sons
Your spirited daughters
I loved you because you had good taste.
I loved you because I learned many things from you.
I loved you because you fed me.
I loved it that you read out loud to me.
I loved the personalities of your women.
We didn't lean.
I loved the country you were born in.
I loved its theater and rock n' roll.
I loved your classicism.
I loved earth more than I loved you, first;
I loved the animals, second;
I loved the children of other people in the wildest, most abstract way,
without irresponsibility or possessiveness.
I loved your passion
and your maroon eyes.
Your sea-blue eyes
Your sky-blue eyes
Your ice-blue eyes
Your gray-blue eyes, your periwinkles
Your hazel eyes
Your violet eyes
(almond-shaped and almost cubist)
Your indigo eyes
Your topaz eyes, your sunkissed lashes
Your turtle-sundae eyes.
I loved your black shiny hair
Your turquoise streaks
Your blond parade
(your hair that speaks)
Your red-sown hair
(cosseted in its own knot)
I loved my friends without sorting things first.
I loved your ringing in the ears
Your Rolling Rock
Your rough-hewn jaw
Your three-day beard
Your mercury
Your staggering toward me
in your navy mugger's cap
in a werewolf dementia
(I loved you and would have shown it to the moon)
I loved your nifty pronouncements
that drifted like seagulls over the pay lot.
And later, your country squire's avant garde
Your full-grown beard
Your handsome sons
Your spirited daughters
I loved you because you had good taste.
I loved you because I learned many things from you.
I loved you because you fed me.
I loved it that you read out loud to me.
I loved the personalities of your women.
We didn't lean.
I loved the country you were born in.
I loved its theater and rock n' roll.
I loved your classicism.
I loved earth more than I loved you, first;
I loved the animals, second;
I loved the children of other people in the wildest, most abstract way,
without irresponsibility or possessiveness.
I loved your passion
and your maroon eyes.
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Author's Note
One of seven poems in The Argotist Online, ed. Jeffrey Side, the last in the chapbook, dog barks up a tree at the apple left in it under a deerslim moon (Orium Press for Dusie Kollektiv 2009):
Other stories by Ann Bogle
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What gorgeous language, Ann. Everything here is so surpising and new. The repetition works, absoutely here, creates a music.
"Your staggering toward me
in your navy mugger's cap
in a werewolf dementia"
line breaks always bewilder me but this is good stuff, A. Pronouncements drifting like sea gulls over the pay lot. yeah.
Wonderful work, Ann, very fine art.
werewolf dementia, country squire's avant garde. yeah. you're so wonderfully warm and wicked, ann!
Kathy, Scott, Ethel, and Carol, I appreciate your comments.
This is a wonderful piece. The motion line to line if effective. I like the detail at the end. Yes.
gobbed, and smacked.
Sam & Victoria, thanks for reading.
Ann, I felt the beginning of the poem ending with "your indigo eyes" could also, in addition to complete poem which I loved, be a complete poem unto itself. abstract and perhaps needing a bottom, there is something about the eyes and being seen which says so much--ie; about "the gaze"
This is marvelous.
The switch from "your" to "my" in this line, however, confuses me.
"I loved my friends without sorting things first."
I guess I like it best with just "your" and "you" lines.
But either way, it's great, Ann!
That's a whole lotta love, Ann. What a song. What an open book, and under the surface, the fierce mystery of all things the N didn't love. The imagery rocks.