Late Summer Lover by Marsha Recknagel

The wonder of him,
A late life surprise.
I was wild, full of
Nightfall and animal calls.

He took me to water, the reservoirs,
Where loons called to each other at sunset;
He told me how a hawk skins a squirrel,
Midair. Why the goat sprays himself
With his own urine, an aphrodisiac, it seems.
What the deep huff of a male deer signals.  

One afternoon, a road trip through
Acres of pine and oaks, past
Apple trees and Dogwood, like
White confetti,
Petals airborne.

Down a long dirt road, we stopped.
My land, he said, with a grin.
The sun, beginning to glaze
The tree tops, glittered off
The river.

The leaves of Butternut trees
Made soft, clapping sounds.
Arms spread wide, he said--  
We’ll build our house here.

He pulled me onto a bed of
Soft loam, the smell dark, musty.
Backlit, he hovered over me, his body
Outlined by sunlight.
I wrapped my legs around him,
Dug my heels into his back,
Held his shoulders tight as reins.
Green, our life on the forest floor.
With the hope and heat of his weight,
I settled into the rhythm we’d found all summer.

Fantasies spun a future--
Imaginary scenes of season after season
With my farmer man. 

Dreams for winter:
Homemade soups and lantern light,
Ceramic jugs, woven red and yellow rugs,
Coffee mugs, mason jars of river rocks.
A cat.  Settled.

He’d told of years before me, hours on the tractor,
Row after row, turn by turn
Until first star.
Each night, he said, on that star,
I wished for you.
He’d been waiting
All this time
For me.

It was terrible later,
When the daydream cracked
Open, our separate selves collided.
He had to go back, he’d said one morning.
Back where? I cried.
Back to where I was before, he said.

Before?
Farm and family, both
Steady, rooted.
My charm,
Lost on them.

Season’s rhythms, miraculous
monotony,
Formed him.
His approach to me--
As if I were a bird,
On the verge of flight or fleeing.
Before me,
He’d been content.
I’m just a simple man, he said.

I broke open like a toppled hive, my love like bees,
Swarms buzzing round his head.
Rending of garments, my mind gone ancient
In its grief. Buttons flew across the room,
Bare-breasted on the porch, I threw his things:
A picture frame, a dentist’s card, a brush,
His quilt and slippers, the detritus
Put through the sieve of summer.

Later would come
Not soon enough.
Days and weeks and months
Devouring books, How to?
Escape
An echo chamber of my loss.

Gone: photos, letters, even post-its,
Only now regret,
If only for one image left
Of hazel eyes, sandy hair,
Rough hands.

There were good reasons to believe
I’d make a rotten farmer’s wife.

The chorus: For the best.
My mantra: For the best.

Yet in the corners, nooks and crannies
In my head there is a house
Where we still listen for the owls,
and watch the morning finches.
We eat our soup made
From vegetables we grew ourselves.
Our bed is made. Our fire still roars.

Artist’s Statement

A diagnosis of MS at fifty-seven was the catalyst for a multitude of relocations: a move from Houston to the Berkshires; retirement from teaching literature and creative writing at a university to a quiet life on eight wooded acres. I also stopped writing. I started making visual art. 

My return to writing feels like a homecoming. Recently I’ve combined art making and narrative to create a series of works from the perspective of one who looks out at the world more than she participates in it. My desire for communication has not diminished—only the conduits.

Poetry is new for me. My genre is nonfiction prose. This publication is the first since I burst on the poetry scene as a third grader. My poem—about a tree—won a state-wide contest judged by Louisiana’s poet laureate.

Marsha Recknagel has an MFA in nonfiction from Bennington Writing Seminars and a Ph.D. in literature from Rice University.  Her memoir If Nights Could Talk was published in 2001; her essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Ohio State University’s The Journal, Vogue and Columbia Journal. Her essay Between Two Storms was nominated for a Pushcart.  She is also a visual artist whose recent work is a series — Ungainly Grace — where she combines image and narrative to explore her life with MS. She lives in the Berkshires on a few acres with three dogs and is at work on a second memoir.