The Husbands<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I married them for all the wrong reasons.
\nOne for sex, another for a boat,
\nthough the boat wasn\u2019t for me
\nbut for the son left behind
\nfrom the sex I married the first one for.
\nBut it was the daughter I carried inside
\nwhen I married the first one.
\nThere were others but they
\ndidn\u2019t quite count as husbands.<\/p>\n
The third I didn\u2019t even marry. We had boat enough to teach us The husbands are all far away now, <\/p>\n Judith Roche<\/a> is the author of three poetry collections, <\/em>most recently, Wisdom of the Body, <\/a><\/em>an American Book Award winner, which was also nominated for a Pushcart. She has published widely in various journals and magazines, and has poems installed on several Seattle area public art projects, including\u00a0 installations at the Brightwater Treatment Plant in King County. She has written extensively about our native salmon and edited First Fish, First People, Salmon Tales of the North Pacific<\/a> <\/em>and has salmon poems installed at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Seattle. She has been Distinguished Northwest Writer-in-Residence at Seattle University, has taught at Cornish College of the Arts, and currently teaches at Richard Hugo House and around the state for the Humanities Washington Inquiring Mind<\/em> series<\/a>.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Husbands I married them for all the wrong reasons. One for sex, another for a boat, though the boat wasn\u2019t for me but for the son left behind from the sex I married the first one for. But … Continue reading
\nHe read me poems in bed
\nand left little behind, nothing of any value.
\nBut the pain turned out about the same.
\nAnd then there was my daughter,
\nsteady, there through all of it,
\nwatching me with blue owl eyes,
\nthinking, is this the way you do it?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nof the sea, the beauty of fish,
\nthe son\u2019s love for water.
\nThe first left me my daughter and my son,
\nboth, my dawn, noon, sunset, and night.<\/p>\n
\ntwo into that great good night\u2013
\nstrange to have outlived them.
\nThe third, off in his own mysteries.
\nThey surface in my dreams,
\nsometimes even the others join in,
\nas lions, as kings, as husbands.
\nThey all blend together, vivid,
\npurring loudly and shape-shifting.
\nI love them \u2013 or him \u2013
\nthe one Great Husband,
\nfor whom
\nI am still a wife.<\/p>\n