Two Vignettes

TWO  VIGNETTES AT THE RAMADA INN IN

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS,

WHICH ILLUSTRATE THE COMPLEXITY OF

MODERN LIFE

I

(1978)

Coming back from Christmas,
I and my – for lack
of a better word—lover

stop here at noon on New Year’s Day

to watch the football games.

We are quarreling over something

I can no longer remember.

We will be back to back

before the Orange Bowl is over.

(Before spring,

it will all be over,

both of us defeated

in a game no one’s made the rules for:

living two thousand miles apart

in places we can’t leave.

Distance does us in.)

II

(1983)

For reasons too complicated to explain,

my ex-husband is driving me back to Texas

after Christmas in Tennessee.

We hit Little Rock with not much time to spare:

I rush in to register; he peels off for junk food.

We settle in just as the Cowboys kick off.

On the trip we have speculated

about whom the Democrats will run in ’84,

have argued over whether we should have built the bomb

once we knew Germany didn’t have it after all,

and I have learned that driving a stick shift

is not like riding a bicycle.

We are almost twenty years from the wedding,

some thirteen from the divorce.

But marriage is not the only tie that binds.

(Later, at home, someone will ask,

“But didn’t his wife mind at all?”

and I realize that’s the first time

the idea has occurred to any of the three of us,

and so I say, “No, I expect she was glad

to have the house to herself for a while.”)

Honoria, a local Murray poet