Still Life with Husband and Wife

[Bernie01]

New owners claim our room,
nail tankards over the fireplace
like killed mallards.

Toss the moss green davenport,
say goodbye to the linoleum
curled along the corner.

Au revoir to the wrinkled lunch
sack carried to the empty
football stands.

Box the pinafore and windup
clock, close cans of half-used
paint and lower the thermostat.

The airport taxi suddenly lurches,
you press to my chest, the heart
leaps up.

[SivaRamanathan]

Bernie
Enjoyed reading this.Just a small suggestion..maybe a hyphen after airport to suggest the airport-taxi as a compound noun,or maybe the' taxi ' in the same line as 'airport.'

The sudden lurch of the airport-
taxi presses you to my chest,
the heart leaps up.'

The sudden lurch of the airport taxi
presses you to my chest,
the heart leaps up.

I remember a line from Hugo Williams,
'I took the stairs
two at a time.'

[Bernie01]

S---

made that change. thanks for the edit and for reading this poem.



J---

conversation among friends sounds like a poem in itself.

thanks for stopping to converse with me, a stranger, but i hope now a friend.


bernie

[FrankThird]

Bernie ole bean
You have been working on this for while. Nearly there. You are not sure about the last stanza, not quite.

The airport taxi suddenly lurches,
you press to my chest, the heart
leaps up.

Drop the modifier?
My heart leaps?

The airport taxi lurches,
you press to my chest
my heart leaps

You should win something with this one.

p.s. I kept out of the Alice and Stein row, I thought it educational from my point of view

P.p.s. Compound nouns can be in three parts:

Closed form as in: lawsuit, wallpaper

Open form: lawn tennis

Hyphenated form: housebuilder

You choose

Regards

Same ole Frank

[Michael (MV)]

 
Hi mojave,


leaving the house behind, but not the home

a re-imaging of home is where the heart is - as the last stanza bears witness to


and the healthy, ironic resonance of the title: Yes, there is still life when there is husband & wife as one

2 hearts beat as one - always life forevermore


Yes, that last line took this reader-writer - a lover of the Light - to a grandfather-poet of childhood:

William Wordsworth's "My Heart Leaps Up"

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.


"So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!"

^^ echoes of "Give me Liberty or give me death"

said by Patrick Henry in 1775; WW would have been 5



Michael (MV)   his heart is homesick for the Home he hasn't arrived to yet
and it won't be in a "death cab for cutie"     dying to arrive Home - AOA - Alive on Arrival