Love Story Series

Gary and Barbara M. Grossman

 

 

 

When Ya Know, Ya Know

By Gary Grossman

Barbara and I met Sept. 15, 1977 when she moved into our shared house. Tom and Mary, two fellow workers at the Davis Food coop and I had rented a four bedroom house and we were looking for another female housemate to take the fourth bedroom. Barbara was that fourth person.

We married on 24 May 1980. For our forty-seven years together we've never lived apart. Through thick and thin, two PhDs (Ecology and Nutrition), two grown daughters, and a house we’ve lived in for 35 years. We’re very proud of our daughters, and there is zero chance they will read this, so we tell them how proud we are, regularly. Our oldest is a surgical veterinarian, and the youngest has an MSc in neuroscience and is learning brain imaging while working in a research lab prior to applying for PhD programs in clinical neuroscience. I guess the apple never does fall far from the tree.
 

 

I Have Always Wondered

why
pregnant women snore
so much.

Awakened at two am
by shaking walls,
while she still sleeps.

But surely it's exhausting,
to share your air and blood
with someone else.
 

 

Reflections on Painting the Kitchen

Two kids,
two cars,
careers.
Too much,
sometimes.

I wanted poplar green, but you held fast.
Now when the sun crowns  
the corrugated fields above our home,
it coats the room with streams of amber,
can't shake ‘em loose, won't slide off,
I let their belly-warm glow
seal my every jangling corner,
so though I doubted yellow,
with your help I’ve learned
the kindness of the color.  
 

 

 

 

 Going Out to a Movie During COVID

Year two of the plague.
A February evening with
coats and scarves to fend off the
violet cold pack of dusk.

I sport a blue Oxford cloth shirt and
khakis, and you, a slinky emerald
wool dress and heels. For a year our
outer skins have been pajama
bottoms and tees, and it feels as
if we have morphed into the
Snow Moon illuminating
the corners of a colorless night.

Perhaps clothes don’t make the man
or woman but I feel as if normality
was slowly repainting my torso.

I reach for the cool brass knob of
the front door, but quickly turn,
draw you close, and say “let’s kiss
before we leave”. A look of surprise,
then your lips part slightly and our
tongues braid a necklace of linked lives.

You take a tissue from your purse,
and reach up, wiping a streak of
scarlet from the corner of my
mouth, then say,
 
“I’ll have to redo my lipstick”

The Quiet

Rising before the sun
I leave the bed softly,
my beshert unstirred,
then tread across our slate-blue
Spanish floor, its breathe
unseen in the dark.

Every day yields thin sheets of
happiness, to be separated,
and held lightly by their bequests.

And the hour before dawn is
a silk jacket, if you choose to
extend your arms.

I make the coffee, pouring
hot water over grounds dark
as burnt oak. It is a slow dance
in the unlight, requiring
patience and steady hands,
as dawn tries to climb into
our eastern kitchen window.

The coffee rested, I
pour a cup and return
to bed, pillows propped up
against our white-worn
headboard.

My wife shifts—her right leg
now sleeps against mine, as  
I sit, drinking black coffee,
in the almost morning. 

The first three poems are from Lyrical Years (Kelsay Books 2023) and the fourth first appeared in Poetry Breakfast.