Love Story Series

 Rachael and Phillip Ikins

 

 

Love Doesn’t Die but Lives Forever

By Rachael Ikins

My husband Phillip and I met in May of 1982. A college student plagued by constant coughs and colds, my doctor sent me for a chest X-ray. A cyst the size of an orange was revealed in the lowest lobe of my right lung. It would periodically leak and give me pneumonia. I learned the only way to deal with it was surgery. I was 27. I picked a name from a random list of surgeons I was given.

Soon after an extremely handsome trim man in a three piece suit, with silver hair smoothed back and a gold stethoscope around his neck came to see me in my hospital room. Phillip Ikins. On July 8 he removed the whole lobe in a 58 minute operation.

Six months later we began dating. He was 57 coming out of an unhappy marriage. We always said our anniversary started in 1982 the day we met. We didn’t move in together until September 1983 and on his birthday January 23, 1987 we married at 7:30 p.m.  in the living room of our house during a blizzard. Luckily everyone made it in spite of the weather.

He died June 1, 2010. By then we had lost our house, moved twice and eventually I found an apartment and time to grieve. It wasn’t until the summer of 2018 though, after I bought the house where I now live, that I had begun to write a lot about him, mostly reminiscing on Facebook, when a good friend from writing group said, “You should do a book about yours and Phillip’s unusual love story.” So I wrote something sort of stream of consciousness and my publisher, Clare Songbirds Publishing House edited it into sections—the four seasons and suggested the addition of the recipes we invented from our garden as well as seasonal poems. These poems about our relationship are from that book, Eating the Sun, a delicious love story dedicated to Phillip, who held my heart in his hands and holds it still.

 

About Phillip’s Birthday

I skated by the lower pond,
From my hill, high perch the gelling ice,
an alien hand, starfish-fingered
sweated into the surface,
a commemoration.

The birthday sign I painted
celebrates from the barn door.
Three deflating balloons, the blue one
almost full even under such snow, and cold.

Consider it, that container of air, my breath and
Kisses, words, laughter, a hollow sphere, full
that moment when
I inhaled
and you were born.

Anniversary

After the day,
After the supper,
candles light.

We slip front to front
Underwater, not one drop gleams between,
we are that close.
Fragrant oil-sheened.

After 25 years, my Spoonie-chin
fits into your collar bone’s bowl.
My arms circle your chest just to there,
where my fingers lie like minnows,
At home in the troughs your ribs create.
We breathe.

In deeper water fish investigates weed tangle.
Some tongue licks lips, somewhere,
an inhalation.
You-and-me.

Under cats and covers,
Night’s darkest secret,
I whisper in your ear and

you slide home. 

Question

The cats wake me before the sun.
I slip back toward sleep listening to them up and down
 the stairs. One dog jumps off our bed to join them.
It is still dark, just before 6 a.m.
Your back against mine a warm length, solid and familiar.
Expected.
I think, “I’m not getting up. You can feed the cats, let dogs out.” I float
closer to sleep’s surface, break through, about to tell you that and then, open my eyes. The cats rocket off walls.
You are not here.

Every day, chores finished,
we’d ride bikes on the canal,
separate paths but keep in touch, walkie talkies.
Meet at the car later, shiny, empty of cares, hearts humming.
We’d drive to a corner cafe for coffee, savor autumn sun,
muscle fatigue,  
each other,
after it all.

Once three heart attacks and cancer
brittled your bones; you cried at breakfast
telling me you dreamt you were riding your bike again.
Your tears dripped into oatmeal. I keep trying
to write about it.

You have been gone eight years.
So much has happened.
The portrait I painted of you hung
in several galleries, and I performed poetry voices
in front of a backdrop of my art at
a small family art school owned
by those friends who used to serve us coffee after rides.

I own my own house. My own heart surgery,
somehow, I found my way back onto my bicycle seat, pedaling.
by a lake that clucks and chuckles. On my drive home
I pass a Dunkin. Often I pull in, a drive-through
double espresso.
Our drink of choice.

Did you ride with me,
today, back around a curve of poplars, just out of sight?
No dream,
real as the sweating blush
of shag-bark maple leaves,
the pink spread of ivy that carpets
the woods opposite the lake.
Do you?


Waiting

When I began the long slide
Down winter trough into dark
When all the light went cold
Seeps into the bones of my soul.

I forgot.

I forgot the tuning symphony
Of wings and strings; Phoebe, cardinal, the ventriloquist
Starling who tries all instruments at once.
Stalking crows, one foot in front,
a bonded pair, blue black belly danced, intensity.

I remember when they sieved beaks through
January snow for dropped sunflower seeds.
Voles tunneled unseen far

below, like my love for
you, my heat for you,
such a surprise, you.
I had forgotten the after-supper walks up the road,
Pink-tongued spring sunsets, taking you by the hand
to marvel over sprouting bulbs and buds.
Now I remember.

All poems are from Eating the Sun. Buy the book:

https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/rachael-ikins/
 

 

 

 

Pumpkin Vines

March across the world,
one green heart swells
on a stout stem.

If I rest my cheek against this skin
It prickles.
It is warm like life,
singing the song
of sunlight.

The voice of my own heart
choruses, wow wow wow!

My toes root in the earth.
Pumpkin twines around my
ankle, holds me tight.
I go down singing, beating.
Two bodies, one heart.

                 Note: my wedding ring is engraved “Two Bodies, One Heart”

 

Invocation
      
Low pink light.
Scarf-draped lamp,
you sigh, push sheet,
blanket aside. 3 a.m.

You collect my legs' fret,
ankles, feet in your lap.
One strong thumb circles
ball of my left foot on
the heart-line...sure enough,
wild flounder starts to slow.

Your other palm cups my heel;
a morsel, delicacy or a baby's head.
Fingers stroke my arch. Your music
lulls confused tympanies.

"Close your eyes."

Once you held my heart in your hand.
Once you told me my heart beats for both
when yours fluttered, a captive bird crazed
to escape. We owned each other.

Quiet voice 5 a.m. I sleep.
I dream you are alive.