Love Story Series

Joe Cottonwood and Rose

 

Folk Singer Meets Nerd

By Joe Cottonwood

Rose and I met in August 1964 at a summer camp in the Adirondacks and were married May 31, 1969. We still go back to that summer camp, which is now private cabins, each year in late August.

 We are still together after sixty years. This is our love story in poetry.

  

Autobiography of Kisses

High school kids in the Chevy wagon
(lips of warm bread)
how innocent we were (tongue of butter)
just kissing.

You unmasked the secret poet,
the scientific fuck-up. I discovered
in your eyes deep libraries,
your flesh oiled calfskin, your furrowed brow
the ink of knowledge when I had no idea
who I was or what I wanted
except kissing
(pure as rainfall).

With dark wisdom you whispered
You are a writer, nothing else.
You should do what you love—besides kissing
(taste of pollen, of nectar).

From your eyes, your voice
rock solid belief
and a nibble of teeth
(scent of moss)
(touch of soft mushroom).

So much, just that. Belief.
And kissing (fresh, a touch, sprouts
in fertile earth).

first published in Red Wolf Journal  

 

 

The Jungle Gym

As the Beatles
swept America
we kissed
first time
on a playground
jungle gym
past midnight.
I had planned
that kiss
for days but never
expected such
lingering
sweetness I can taste
yet all these
years.

Our wedding
the rebels
changing the world
you said
kissing is corny
so I didn't.
Afterwards
always
my regret.
They threw
corny old
rice.
I was delighted.
Some pleasures
are a complete
surprise.

From my book Son of a Poet
 

 

It’s the Summer of Love and your period is late

We are college kids
flowers in our hair
bicycling through Oregon
to Frisco or bust.

We cruise Tillamook
as if a different life,
tour the cheese factory,
charmed by the town
with cows along the road
calm in their cuds.

Maybe it’s a message from the bovine
but your breasts, you say, are more tender now.
We are in love but not ready for the Big If.

Camping at Cape Lookout with hot showers,
toweling wet hair, you return grinning because
you are very not pregnant, you say.
End of an era, beginning of a period.

When finally we pedal into the Haight,
summer’s end, it’s a strung-out scene
selling no joy. Frisco’s a bust. You say
We lost something in that shower drain.

To the airport, eastward,
steam-heat classrooms for us.
Rain, fresh green grass for Tillamook.

First appeared in Monterey Poetry Review    

Junkyard Wedding

My father sings, tone deaf.
A chemist, he equates the musical scale
to the periodic table of elements. (Don’t ask.)
He loves the science of soap bubbles,
invents shaving creams, new alloys
for razor blades. Keeps the family half-broke.
Loves art, half-blind.
He buys paintings, crams the walls
like a strip-mall gallery. Says:
For the children’s edification.
Mom says: Beatnik art.
One nude, Japanese style, muff like a mink pelt
Mom stashes in the basement. One of wrecked
automobiles beneath high voltage power lines,
blue sky, scudding clouds bears the label
AUTO SALVAGE. Mom seeths:
Car carcasses in the living room.

My girlfriend gazes at the wrecks,
makes a polite remark: That’s unusual.
Mom says, I’ll give you that painting
as a wedding present. Then blushes
at her faux pas. We’re boyfriend-girlfriend,
our flower just budding but already
Mom smells the full bouquet.

Now sixty years, look:
beatnik junkyard and Japanese nude
grace our living room wall.
Fine art. You like? No?

First appeared in Slipstream      

 

 

 

 

And Here You Are — August 1978

Vacuuming is the first sign of labor.
Next, Rose scrubs the stovetop, washes shelves,
toothbrushes the countertop grout.
Nobody can stop her. The cabin, immaculate
as Rose calls the midwives. We go to
the back yard where we keep a waterbed
for these hot August days to bask in
the good vibes of the pine tree,
the Jersey cows in the pasture across the street,
the funky country smell of home.
The plan is, when labor picks up, we’ll drive
to the hospital for the actual birth.

Midwife Iris examines, says one centimeter
so there’s plenty of time. She and midwife Sara
make mint tea in the kitchen.
The full moon is rising, pregnant and orange.
Left alone, Rose and I smooch a little,
which seems to shift labor into high gear.
Rose feels an urge to push.
I fetch Iris whose tea is still brewing—
that’s how fast it happened.

One look, and Iris says the baby is crowning.
Forget the hospital. Sara is gathering towels,
Rose is blowing puff-puff-puff,
Iris is putting on latex gloves when
with a snorting sound your head pops out
with a hand at the neck. Your left hand.
From day one you were left-handed.
A tight fit but Iris eases you out. Sara wraps you
in a towel and places you on Rose’s belly.
You’re a girl, our steaming fresh baby.

Doctor Don arrives — Sara had called him.
He won’t go near Rose. He’s been warned
he’ll lose hospital privileges if he attends
one more hippie home birth. So he stands
by the garbage cans with his doctor bag
in case of emergency, but Iris knows exactly
what she’s doing as she delivers the placenta
with a cloud of vapor in the cool night air.
Sara lights candles that flicker with the breeze.
Moonlight casts shadows through the bishop pine.

You grasp my finger. Your cord, clamped. I cut.
I help Rose sit up, which is tricky in a waterbed,
and we put you to the breast.
Doctor Don from the garbage cans says
“I see ten fingers and ten toes. Good job.”
He departs. Iris and Sara clean up and go.

At midnight, Quinn the German shepherd
stands guard. Indoors we sleep holding
your flesh to our flesh for contact,
for affirmation of this miracle.
Welcome home our black-haired bundle of life,
our daughter forever, our precious pine cone
dropped by the moon.

This Longest Night

Gusty gales rattle
    window glass
as one child wakes with a bloody nose
    which wakes the youngest
    which wakes the middle
—chain reaction—
all sleeping in one room
    for warmth
as nesting mice huddle
    among woven grass
    under sheets of ice.

Mom and dad juggle
    tissues, laps,
in this thin-walled rental
this longest night.

We are poor.
We are parents.
We are not poor parents.

First appeared in CultureCult Anthology "Nocturne"    

 
Golden Anniversary

Fifty years ago chatting,
brewing coffee in a Sears metal pot
in that mousy kitchen in St. Louis
if you asked where we imagined
our marriage would take us,
a redwood forest would not figure
into the answer.
But here we stand.

Fun is transient.
Strength, uplift, roots,
that’s joy.

Half a century
weathering changes
passes in a blink.
Ask any sequoia.

First appeared in Red Wolf    

 
She awakes feeling light-headed

as if the vacuum inside an incandescent bulb,
stands up and promptly falls face-forward
bonks her head on a potted ficus,
breaks the pot
spilling water from the tray beneath
and she sprawls in potty muck
smelling fertile and dark

but then she can walk
so he hauls her to Stanford Emergency
where they bring electrodes for her chest.
She says to the tech
Just a warning, no bra
so you won’t be surprised
because sometimes they are
and knowing these are not
the breasts men envy.

A single doctor
then a team of 3 doctors a couple nurses
a blood draw a CT scan
concluding not stroke but an inner ear thing
and an unspoken sense of
What do you expect —
You’re old people.

Return home, a day gone
eat crab cakes for dinner
wine for her, a beer for him
then on the flat screen
they watch a screwball comedy
as rain pounds the window
and they go to bed
above a fertile dark scent from the floor.

Lying down makes her feel
light-headed again without brain mass.
Mortal she says
but safe on flannel sheets
as they chat in the night holding hands
and surprised
she at her need her desire
he at his solid response
play a familiar game
slowly the old-people way
slightly dizzy but she smiles
stretches her flawed but precious body
until they sleep curled like kittens
trusting or at least hoping
tomorrow to wake.

First appeared in Rat’s Ass Review