Two Women In A Photograph Poem by Bernard Henrie

In the final quarter-mile
of our hike, the wind
cuts into us and we arrive
home chilled and silent.

Kathleen showers,
rose branches on the upper
left of the glass hide nothing.

Water rivulets play
with her form.

Restless, I shuffle magazines;
eye the stereo control.

I telephone my daughter
and hear noisy co-workers
behind; I imagine she raises
a slender, ballerina arm,
silence unfolds.

Want to come for lunch?

She is four hundred
miles away in Berkeley.

Ox tail soup
and dry martinis…

I could sooner design
a moon rocket than create
such a lunch; an old joke
from days when I was both
mother and father.

We talk a bit more;

say the magic words:

love you with all my heart

Cradling the telephone,
Kathleen in the doorway,
hair streaming, feet in first
position plié;

she offers a cocoa mug
as though a silver chalice.