(Week Seven) Improvisation #3 of Form

Claudia Emerson's "Triptych"

'The Garden'

She made her husband's dinner in the afternoon,
then sealed it for him to warm up later while she gardened

well past dark. Used to it, he no longer complained.
Every morning she let in the neighbor's gray cat;

she didn't know his name, had never fed him,
but every day he returned, faithful, to spend

hours moving with the sun through her house in a drowsy
migration. Sometimes he followed her into the garden,

would rub against her legs as though comforting her,
as though he alone understood that every bulb she sank into this earth

was another stone sewn into the hem of her skirt.



My Improv':

She made her husband's dinner in the afternoon,
neverminded his muddied work-boots tracking
impossible stains through the house (which she'd
just managed to scrub out from yesterday). Though
he never asked about her day, she was glad. Nothing
ever happened, and her life, she admits, sounds
boring. His stories were epics, always invoking
in her a sense of pride. She knew he shared space
with heavyweights: galiant as Sir Gawain, brave
as Odysseus, smitten as Romeo. And he was her man.
Even when he drank too much and cussed loud
enough for the shutters to shake. Sometimes he hit
her, but she knew it was stress. He had hard orders
from God. Tilling dry ground wasn't exactly easy,
she knew. And she knew it because of her
they were tossed out of the garden like unripe seeds.