Bittersweet

 

Bittersweet

(or What’s in a Name?)

 

He climbed down the bank

alongside the canal

to cut some bittersweet

with his penknife

for me

 

We in our sixties and dare I say

bittersweet years? Diabetes

taxing his heart

Me, devising meals for a diabetic

 

He braves the bank

slippery from rain

and carries as many gnarly twigs

as he can in one arm

reserving one arm for climbing

back over the railing

 

A brier I love for its colors,

slight disclosure of its red berry,

(The way our passion is muted

and kept under wraps)

as much as for its name –

bittersweet

 

Out of favor with gardeners

moving in and strangling

their favored plantings

bittersweet seems to find pleasure

in pleasing him pleasing me

 

©2019 Muriel Thumm

A Poem with a Hole in it

 

 

My brother at 14 sat

on the kitchen stool

stock between his knees

played with the trigger

and put a hole in the ceiling

 

When he was 18

and in the Army in Germany,

the house burned down

around that hole

 

The hole didn’t burn

 

It’s all I have left

of that childhood home

 

a hole

 

©2021 Muriel Thumm