Marriage Dance: Year 45 by Dick Westheimer

Marriage Dance: Year 45

Most nights it’s the same:
an onion sliced skin-thin,
cashews stirred in, over the flame,

while I go to the cellar
for garlic and winter squash.
The kitchen smells

of olive oil and the onions
now sugar sweet—are an almost
burning sap. Garlic

oils my fingertips which
I bring to my lips and lick
till the glow illuminates

my appetites. The skillet shimmers
syrupy and begs
for savory company—

the garlic and squash,
over-wintered collards,
just picked and washed.

My wife waits to come over
and brush against my hip
till I put down the knife.

She knows I hone it sharp enough
to shave. She knows that when I stand
over the cutting board, I am

married to wood and vegetable
and blade. She knows that I can
love only one thing at a time.

I tell her she is a lucky woman—
that I love her as well as my
kitchen tools that I’ve seasoned

and sharpened and cared for
since before our time. She sets the table,
lights a little flame, and doesn’t say a thing.

*

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio, his home for nearly 50 years, with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared in Only Poems, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Abandon Journal, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at www.dickwestheimer.com