Robert Riche

WHY HAVE I WONDERED IF YOU LOVE ME

I remember when we spent long times together
tending flowers in the garden.
You'd snip a yellow iris, hand it to me.

And I, in turn, would find for you a blue dahlia,
and then you would present me with a pint rose,
and then I again something back to you, until
our bountiful spray of sweetness said everything there was.

Lately your things and my things we do at separate times.
You are not here, and I am not there.
Is this what happens over years? I wonder
if you even care.
Dare I ask myself the same question?

Yesterday, when your hip slipped from its socket,
and you lay in the driveway
with the pillow I put under your head
until the E. M. S. crew arrived to carefully lift
you into the ambulance, and you moaned
holding back the shriek that demanded to come out,
they wouldn't allow me to ride with you to the hospital.

Later, after surgery, I would see you restored
in their iron hospital bed, your hair spread out on the pillow,
like one of those sprays we gathered from the garden.
A small smile crept across your face when I entered the room,
I leaned across your body to kiss your lips,
your cheeks and mine suddenly were awash
in sweetness and everything there ever was.

Robert Riche is a recipient of a NEA grant, Connecticut Foundation for the Arts grant, Norman Mailer Writers Colony scholar, Breadloaf Writers Conference scholar, He is a published novelist and short story writer, and has written for the stage and film, has published two poetry chapbooks and his poetry appears in many literary magazines.