Day Fourteen
She follows the winding path
from the state orphanage to the Adriatic Sea,
which is clotted with oil on its Eastern shore.
A boy walks by and holds up a fistful
of writhing eels, a Medusa head,
like the eel they ate the night before,
while a blind guitarist played;
and fried eel was offered
followed by fig cake studded with fly legs.
Because the road to Skodra passed over a ravine,
they had walked a rope- hung bridge one
by one to get to that State Dinner.
It was a time of war,
gunfire over the mountains in Kosovo,
infants dying for lack of IV tubing--
rickets, ringworm, cleft palates,
eels and bodies.
So last night when the music started
and that man said, “Come.”
She did and danced till it all was gone.
Nothing but two bodies and the beat
--Nothing but bodies.
Letter to My Long-Term Husband
I want you to wait under our Oak trees,
water my tomato plants, pick the last peony
and miss me like Donald Hall misses Jane.
I want you to remember
this isn’t the first time I have left you.
And, Honey, remember the body that carried your children,
the breasts that no one else has touched in thirty some years,
my office with its piles of papers
never to be sorted in the way you think right,
my purple clematis brought from the old house,
my grandmother’s thimble,
your mother’s wedding ring in my drawer,
her ashes in the gold and green box on your closet shelf,
the children we almost has, our children,
my hair in the sink, on your brush, your pillow,
the Christmas cactus that was my mother’s,
O, visit my mother she forgot my name Thursday.
Remember the room where we first made love,
the tangled sheets, the slant of sun,
my body young as yours-- remember
I want you to remember, because
if you block my sun again;
I will leave you with the ashes and Oak trees.
This time I really will.
Linda Leedy Schneider is a poetry and writing mentor, psychotherapist in private practice and college writing instructor whose work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Linda has written five collections of poetry including Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist. This year she edited an anthology of poetry by writers she is mentoring privately, Mentor’s Bouquet (Finishing Line Press, 2010.) Another anthology of poetry from writers in her Manhattan Writing Workshop (Pudding House Publications 2010) was released in June. Linda believes that a regular writing practice leads to discovery, authenticity, personal growth and even JOY.
Albania, Day Fourteen was first published in The Pedestal Magazine Issue #43. December, 2007. Republished as a 2007 Reader’s Award winner Issue #44- January, 2008. Letter To My Long-Term Husbandpreviously published in an international anthology Not A Muse, The Inner Lives of Women, Haven Books, Hong Kong, 2009.