C22

poem by Ellen Bau

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed.  Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young.  His beard was gray.

She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine

her saying she had to lose.  But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking 

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again.  We were all watching -

passengers waiting for the delayed flight

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses.  We couldn't look away.  We could

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face.  When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after - if she beat you or left you or 

you're lonely now - you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed,

all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,

her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,

little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

Last week I received a riveting compilation of poetry selected by Garrison Keillor, sent to me by my new friend Bethany.  I met Bethany less than a year ago.  As we talked and shared, and got to know one another I said something like, "I love poetry."  "Really?"  She asked, "Who's your favorite poet?"  I mumbled, tossing out a couple of names of long dead wordsmiths, whose lines I treasured years ago.  Then I confessed, "I guess I haven't read poetry in a long time.  Not since becoming a mom anyway."

Bethany's a mother too.  She understood how easy it was for me to lose this part of my autonomy and forego this passion in the midst of spit-up and diaper changes.  

Since our meeting I have received three such collections of both old and modern day poets from my dear new friend.  The above poem, C22,  rattled me to the core two days ago as I read it aloud to my husband, driving north on Interstate 5.  At the poem's end I sighed and said, "That's poetry."  

Last night I found one of my well worn books and brought it to my eldest son's room.  We read Robert Frost aloud together.  Ironically, when we came to his famous "Nothing Gold Can Stay" I saw those same two words written by the title, and the date penned beside it.

"That's poetry 9-5-90"

Not only is my passion for the written word in tact after all these years of laying myself down to pick up the needs and passions of so many little ones, but my response to what moves the core of me is unchanged.

"That's poetry!"  

It's the same.  The same.  I'm the same.  Way down deep.  Though time and mothering has separated me from some hobbies, I find myself the same today at 38 as I was as at sweet 16.

I love poetry.  Always have.  And as I start to untie the binds I've willingly bound these past 8 years I'm discovering some of my old passions again.

I've missed me.  

Not just anthologies of poetry and rose bouquets,  but me, and my thoughts, and my dreams, and my skin, and my heart.  

Thank you, Bethany, for the gift of this discovery.  And might this post be the inspiration you need to grab a good book, turn up the radio, or plan a date to walk along the shore with your love and Kiss, kiss, kiss.  Long and hard.  Remembering how good it feels.