Hello Poets! Great to read you all and see again the spectrum of feeling this topic evokes in all of us. I'm late this week with my "something new" poem, but here it is anyway. My true love took my name when we married which is pretty unusual. I love to think of him joining all these Englishmen of my dad's family - this wild upstart with fresh ideas and notions of change.
Thanks for so many great poems this week!
KateSinging
The New Mr. Chadbourne
wears the name at first
like a jacket with the pins still in it,
the fit between tailorings
It’s not his father’s coat
but mine, clapped on fourteen
generations of English backs
Worn against the sea-air
scurvy and questionable geography
en route to a New World
Slung round the shoulders
as they stripped pine bark and shaped
boards to fit the roof on an early house
Handed casually, man to man,
a name to wear from the first breath
until the patched and threadbare last
Dozens of northern ocean-goers –
blue-eyed, pale, and doughty –
joined by my wedding this odd volunteer:
Green-eyed, Italian-blooded, Kansas-born
man who liked the cut of my coat
more than the one he was handed
and thought it time for a change.
Kate
2 March 2008